


Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land

by Raberba girl (Raberba_girl)



Series: Promised Land AU [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Big Brother Prompto Argentum, Brothers, Children, Clones, Cor Leonis is Prompto Argentum's Parent, Don’t copy to another site, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, MT Prompto Argentum, Minor proofreading we have a brush with death like mne, Occasional swearing, Protective Siblings, Rough Draft, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 50,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22686463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raberba_girl/pseuds/Raberba%20girl
Summary: After months of rehabilitation in Insomnia, the teenage MT unit now known as Prompto Argentum has been recaptured and imprisoned in his old training facility. The rules, routines, pain, and loneliness are all familiar, but they are no longer the only things he knows. (Inspired by lithos_saeculum'sPoor Wayfaring Stranger.)*Main story complete! I will continue adding side stories here.
Relationships: Lunafreya Nox Fleuret & Magitek Troopers, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prompto Argentum & Cor Leonis, Prompto Argentum & Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Prompto Argentum & Magitek Troopers, Prompto Argentum & Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: Promised Land AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676959
Comments: 431
Kudos: 417





	1. Chapter 1

Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land

(rough draft)

A Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl

****If you paid money to read this work of fanfiction, that means it was stolen and reposted without the author's knowledge or consent. Please do not support apps or web sites that repost without permission and/or illegally profit off of other people's work.**

Summary: After months of rehabilitation in Insomnia, the teenage MT unit now known as Prompto Argentum has been recaptured and imprisoned in his old training facility. The rules, routines, pain, and loneliness are all familiar, but they are no longer the only things he knows.

A/N: *throws another WIP onto the giant pile instead of doing anything productive*

**Although the main plot of this (and the Tenebrae backstory) has nothing to do with lithos_saeculum's _Poor Wayfaring Stranger_ , I did get the idea for this when my daydreaming about PWS got out of hand, and a lot of the Insomnia backstory and minor details are the same as in PWS.**

Part 1

He remembers Luna's voice: _"No! He's-- he's my slave. If you take him, then you are stealing my property."_

He remembers the one with the purple hair's voice, too: _"Oh my, and you were so insistent just a few weeks ago that you would not tolerate such a 'barbaric practice' in your house! You can't have it both ways, my dear. Is he your slave, or isn't he?"_

It didn't matter what Luna said. Prompto understands now. The one with the purple hair always planned to take him, no matter what Luna said to try to save him. She wasn't able to help, but she was a good...friend. He knows what 'friend' means now. She was his friend, and so was Noctis, and they were also friends with each other. Prompto wishes they'd all been able to 'hang out' together at the same time.

He stops thinking about Luna and Noctis because the treatment is complete. They take the needles out of his arms and undo the restraints. He tries not to stumble as he stands up. They walk him back to his pod, and he gets in and lies down. They lock it, and then they go away.

It's too dark to see anything, and there's barely any room to move. He knows he's supposed to be sleeping, but he can't sleep. He feels sick because of the treatment, and bad because he's here at the facility again instead of with Cor. Cor wouldn't have let him come back here, he's sure of that. And he knows now that it wasn't Cor who found him at the festival and led him away to the ship, it was the one with the purple hair. He doesn't know why the one with the purple hair looked like Cor. He wishes he'd known back then - if he'd known, he would have left the one with the purple hair and found the real Cor. Cor would have kept him...safe. Cor always kept him safe.

Prompto thinks about Cor and wishes he was safe now.

o.o.o

He wakes up when the pod opens. He steps into line with the other level twos and they walk to the room with the chairs. He sits down. A human plugs a feeding tube into his sustenance port, clicking it securely into place.

Before, he would have only thought of her as a human who probably wouldn't hurt him, but he's seen many more humans now, and he watches her as she works. She has light brown hair pulled back and tied behind her head, and she has glasses. There's a thin silver chain around her neck, but it's tucked under her clothes and he can't see if there's anything shiny or colorful hanging from it. She's wearing gloves, but he can see the bulge of a ring on one of her fingers underneath the glove. He wonders if she lives in a house or an apartment.

The human turns the machine on and moves to the next MT unit. The machine whirs, and after a minute, sustenance comes through the tube and begins to fill his stomach.

Carefully, trying not to let the movement show, he runs his tongue along the back of his teeth and thinks of Ignis. He thinks of Ignis cooking, and teaching him to cook, and putting vessels of soup in front of him. He closes his eyes and remembers how the soup tasted - there were many different kinds, but all of them tasted very good. He remembers how warm they were, how soothing they felt sliding down his throat and filling his stomach.

The sustenance here at the facility just feels cold inside him. He doesn't know how it tastes. He doesn't even really know how it looks.

He doesn't want to taste it, and he's glad he doesn't have to.

o.o.o

They dress in their uniforms and arrange themselves in the training room. The human instructor inspects them, then explains their first task.

Prompto doesn't like the treatments, but without them, his performance would be much worse. His vision has been fixed, and he no longer needs glasses or fake eyes. His reflexes are even better than they were before, and he's learned new things from training with Gladio and Noctis and Cor. He's still not excellent at hand-to-hand combat, but he does well enough to avoid a lot of correction now.

He seems to notice more than he did before Cor took him to Lucis. Before, if no one was being corrected, all he would have thought about during training was how to perform well enough to avoid correction himself. Now, he notices other things.

He sees how scared all the other level twos are even though they try to always keep their faces blank like they've been taught. He sees how, when an MT is corrected, the others all work harder so they won't be corrected, too. When 05953223 is punished for 05953222's mistake, he sees 3222's face twist a little in dismay, showing an unacceptable level of expression. He sees 3240 trying so hard but failing the exercise anyway, and he sees the terror in 3240's eyes when the instructor shouts and starts striking him with a club.

He sees 3222's hands curl into fists as they watch 3240 being corrected - then he realizes that his hands are in fists, too. It's difficult to make them relax. He doesn't want to be corrected. He doesn't want to watch 3240 being corrected. He doesn't want 3240 to be corrected at all. People don't treat people like this - MT units aren't human, but Prompto was getting used to the idea that they might be people. No one in Lucis ever corrected him when he made mistakes, and he learned so much better and faster than he did here.

He thinks that maybe the system for training MT units might be flawed. Before Lucis, he would have never dared to think that, but now, as he watches 3240 curled up in his own blood on the floor, he remembers how kind and gentle everyone in Lucis was when they taught him things, and he feels-- Not angry, because MT units don't get angry. He feels - _frustrated_. Very frustrated. He wishes he was back in Lucis. He wishes 3240 was in Lucis, too, and 3222 and all the other level twos. Cor and Gladio would know how to teach 3240 how to do the exercise without hurting him.

"Get up," the instructor snarls. 3240 gets up. He's shaking and tears are running down his face, but he stands. "What is this?" the officer snaps, slapping him across the face. He holds up his hand with 3240's tears on it. "You know this isn't permitted. Go to the correction chamber."

3240 makes a noise, but he obediently turns and limps out of the room. 3222 takes a step toward the officer, but Prompto moves in front of him to block his way. He can feel 3221 and 3223 crowding a little closer so that 3222 can't get past. None of them want 3222 to be sent to the correction chamber, too. They all know how much it hurts. It's bad enough that 3240 has to go.

"Again!" the instructor calls, and the level twos move to perform the exercise again.

o.o.o

The days are all so similar and unpleasant and _boring_ that it's hard to remember how many have passed. There have been a lot of days.

Prompto wonders if Cor will come and take him away again. He wonders if Cor even knows where he is, or what happened to him. He wonders if Cor misses him. He thinks he does, because Cor said it: _"It’s really important to me to have you with me."_ So he's 97% sure that Cor misses him.

He's 100% sure that he misses Cor. And Noctis and Ignis and Gladio, and Arcis, and everyone in Lucis. Even the one from the phone and the one with the club. He misses them all a lot.

o.o.o

There are cameras everywhere, so it's usually difficult to break the rules without being caught, but this exercise is different. The room is big and dark and full of obstacles, so even though there's a camera, it probably can't see much.

They're shooting moving targets, and he's already surpassed his quota. He stops shooting. He hopes there are enough targets left for everyone to make their quota.

While he waits, another MT comes rushing around an obstacle and throws himself against the same piece of cover Prompto is crouched behind. He fires frantically, and whimpers when only two of his five shots connect.

Prompto adjusts his vision until he can see the MT unit's barcode. It's 3240. 3240 appears to be performing poorly, and Prompto doesn't want to see him get corrected again.

He seizes 3240's gun out of his hands and starts firing. He shoots down targets until the indicator light changes from red to green, showing that the wielder has met quota. He stops shooting and hands the gun back.

3240 stares at him. After a while, Prompto smiles a little bit.

"Why did you do that?" 3240 whispers.

"I wanted you to make quota. There was a very low chance you would make it on your own."

They wait a while. Finally 3240 says, "Thank you."

Prompto knows what the correct response is now. "You're welcome."

It finally goes quiet, and the lights come on. The instructor shouts, and the MTs quickly line up. The instructor moves down the line, checking the indicator lights on the weapons. When he sees that 3240's is green, he pauses for a long time. Then he slaps 3240's face. "I'm watching you, Thirty-two Forty," he growls. " _Give_ me an excuse to mark you for decommissioning."

It's an order, and 3240's face goes completely white, but the instructor doesn't wait for an answer. He continues on down the line, and Prompto wonders if what he said was like how humans sometimes express a wish or a preference in the language of an order. 3240 is shaking now, and Prompto shifts a little closer so he can touch the side of his hand to 3240's without anyone seeing.

o.o.o

The next morning, while Prompto is hooked up to the sustenance machine, he realizes that the MT unit sitting directly across from him is staring at him. He sharpens his vision so he can see the MT's barcode: it's 3240. He smiles a little bit. His vision is still sharpened, so he's able to see when 3240 smiles a little bit back.

o.o.o

3240 speaks to him that evening, while they're cleaning the latrines together. "Why are there spots on your face?" he whispers.

Prompto remembers what Gladio said the day his freckles first appeared. "I got some sun," he murmurs back. He's still not sure what the correlation is, but contextual data seemed to suggest that there was one.

"...What is sun?"

Prompto pauses. It seems extraordinary now, but he remembers that there was a time when he didn't know what the sun was, either. "It's...a light. A very big one, but it's so far away that it looks much smaller than it really is. It's still looks big, though. It's outside - it shines in the sky, and it's very beautiful. Sometimes the clouds cover it up, or it's hidden behind Eos as Eos rotates, but it's always there even when we can't see it."

3240 stops working and stares at him. Prompto finally remembers that there was a time when he didn't know what 'clouds' or 'Eos' were, either.

"There's a lot to explain," he says. "But the sun is a big, beautiful light that you can see when you go outside."

"You've been outside?"

Prompto smiles. He thinks of Cor and Noctis and everyone in Lucis. "Yes. It's very good. It's much better than it is here."

3240 keeps staring at him until the supervising officer's footsteps sound in the corridor, and then he hurriedly resumes working.

After the officer passes, 3240 whispers, "Why did you go outside when you're only a level two? Were you corrected?"

"My commanding officer took me outside." He knows that 3240 will not understand what a 'dad' is, and he doesn't know how to explain. "Someone else brought me back."

"The commanding officer took you outside?"

"Not the one here. I was reassigned to a different commanding officer. But the one with the purple hair took me away from him and brought me back here."

"I don't understand."

"It's difficult to explain."

They finish that latrine and move on to the next one. "Will you tell me more about outside?" 3240 finally asks.

"Yes."

o.o.o

He wakes up in his pod. Something warm and heavy is lying on his chest, licking his face. The thing is glowing a little bit, so he can tell what it is.

"Pryna." He rubs his hand over her head. She's very soft, and he feels tears slip down his face. He wonders if he's awake or dreaming. He had nightmares his first few days back in the facility, but he hasn't had any dreams at all since then, so maybe this is real.

Pryna gets up and shuffles closer to him. It's hard for her to move in the confined space. He opens the little pouch on her collar and sees a folded letter. He opens it and adjusts his vision so he can read it.

It says:

_Dear Prompto,_

_I haven't been able to sleep since you were taken away. I pray that you are still alive, though I suppose it's too much to hope that you are well._

_I told our mutual friend that you were here for a few weeks. He is very frustrated that he can't help directly, but he and the others, especially your father, were all deeply relieved to hear what became of you after the festival. Although the chancellor's involvement means there is not much they can do, I imagine they are doing what they can. I know they miss you greatly._

_Please respond if you are able. Unfortunately, this is not a secure method of communication, but even a simple reassurance that you are alive would make me very grateful._

_Yours,_

_Lunafreya Nox Fleuret_

He doesn't have anything to write with. He doesn't have anything at all except the jumpsuit he's wearing, Luna's letter, and what Pryna's wearing.

He folds the letter into the 'origami' dog shape that Luna taught him and tucks it into Pryna's pouch. She licks his face again, and he strokes her head. She lies back down on his chest.

When his storage pod opens and he wakes again, he sees that Pryna is gone.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 2 (rough draft)**

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter, but that was a good stopping point and everywhere near the 2,200 mark was more awkward.

o.o.o

They're in the training room. 05953240 performed poorly again and is being corrected. The instructor shouts that 3240 will go straight to decommissioning when he's done.

The expression on 05953222's face is not blank at all; he would be corrected if the instructor was paying attention to him. 3222 suddenly surges forward and 3221 raises a hand to stop him, but isn't fast enough. 3223 whimpers when he realizes what is about to happen. All the other level twos are frozen, faces stiff but horror in their eyes.

If 3222 hurts the instructor, he'll be decommissioned. 3240 is already going to be decommissioned.

Prompto tries not to move much and to aim out of the corner of his eye when he shoots out the camera. Hopefully no one watching will be able to tell what caused the camera to malfunction.

They certainly won't have any recording of what is happening now, which is 3222 screaming as he empties his entire ammunition clip into the instructor. Using the whole clip was unnecessary: the instructor is dead before the end of it, half his head splattered across the floor and the wall and 3227, who was standing in an unfortunate location when 3222 opened fire.

The gun goes silent except for empty clicking. 3240 cries and shakes. No one else moves.

Prompto suddenly knows what to do. He hasn't thought about it until now, he didn't know this would happen, but now that it has, he knows what to do. If he doesn't do it, every single MT in this room will be severely corrected and 3222 and 3240 will certainly be decommissioned. The rest of them might be decommissioned as well. That is unacceptable. They are people, like him.

"MT units," Prompto says, "we have been reassigned. Our mission is to rendezvous with our new commanding officer, and I have been designated acting commander in the interim. We need to gather supplies and the rest of the cargo." It feels very strange to be giving orders, but he's ordering MT units, not humans, so he doesn't feel sick.

He retrieves the instructor's badge and uses the man's shirt to wipe the blood from 3227's face and the bone fragments from his uniform. He gently pushes 3222, who looks dazed, between 3221 and 3223, because the three of them seem to frequently stay close together even when it's unnecessary. He lifts 3240 from the floor and the MT clings to him, refusing to be handed off into anyone else's care.

Prompto adjusts 3240's grip so that the MT is clinging to his clothes instead of his arm, then tells the other level twos, "The rest of the cargo is the level ones, the level threes, and the level fours." He knows it's too late for the level fives: they have been fully consumed by daemonic miasma and are not people anymore. "We're supposed to kill any level fives or daemons we come across. That's a standing order until we reach the new commander. While we're still in the facility, we need to destroy all the cameras we see."

The next thing he's about to say is more delicate. "We also-- Our new commanding officer ordered us to kill any Imperial soldier who tries to interfere with our mission or damage the cargo." It's a lie, and he doesn't like how it feels in his mouth, but he can't bring himself to directly order the deaths of humans. He knows that Cor and the others kill plenty of Imperials, and he knows that Cor wants him home. It makes sense that Cor would want them to kill any Imperial soldiers who try to stop them from getting home. "They are traitors who have been marked for execution," Prompto lies again. The MTs who were alarmed don't look as alarmed anymore. Some of the others' eyes gleam in anticipation.

Prompto uses the badge to unlock the door and leads the level twos down the corridors. They shoot at cameras, and alarms begin to sound. Announcements are made about rogue MT units. "It's not for us," Prompto lies again. "The rogue units they're talking about are the level fives. That's why we're supposed to kill them."

This is only a training facility, not an important base. There are only a few humans and a minimum number of level five MT units.

While the other level twos are holding off some level fives outside the corridor, Prompto, with 3240 still clinging to him, opens the level threes' pods, where they were locked once the alarms started going off. "You've been reassigned," he tells each one. "Wait for further orders." By the time he's released them all, the fives have all been destroyed and the twos gather around. The threes wait obediently for orders.

"You've been reassigned," Prompto tells them again. "I am acting commander until we rendezvous with our new commanding officer. Every incomplete MT unit in this facility is cargo. We need to retrieve the rest of the cargo and gather supplies."

He tells them who to kill and what to destroy, including the control room and the communications room. They collect the level fours. They gather energy packs and sustenance packs and medical packs and jugs of water. They collect as many weapons and as much ammunition as they can carry. They find bags to fill with what they've gathered so that there is room in their hands for more. They find a storage unit filled with coats and Prompto remembers how cold it is outside, so he makes the MTs put on the coats. There aren't enough for all of them, so he has them take blankets from the dormitories.

The alarms are still going, but everything else is quiet. No human or level five has confronted them for at least fifteen minutes. Prompto hopes they're all dead.

He has collected a number of badges by now, and when they reach the wing where the level ones are kept, he scans badges until one of them makes the door open. He leads the way in.

The sounds are very muffled and mostly covered by the alarms, but he can still faintly hear many of the level ones crying or screaming. He suddenly remembers when he was a level one himself, how long it took him to stop crying whenever he was trapped in the confined darkness of his pod. It's been a long time since he remembered that, and he wishes he hadn't. It hurts.

He orders the other MTs to help him take the level ones out of their pods. It soon becomes much louder, because the level ones are still sobbing and wailing but their voices are no longer muffled. They cling to the older MTs who let them out.

The level ones are so small. Prompto doesn't remember ever being this small, even though he knows he must have been.

"This is how you hold them," he calls out, demonstrating with the last level one he released. He remembers seeing human parents hold their children who were the same size as the level ones, and he remembers Noctis and Gladio teaching him how to correctly hold animals and babies. Support is important, and so is comfort.

The level ones seem to understand better than the older MTs do, wrapping their legs around whoever holds them and putting their faces against the older MTs' chests or shoulders as they continue to cry. They are pressing their hands over their ears, and after a minute, he realizes it's because the alarms are loud and the level ones don't have the ability to adjust their hearing. The older MTs study Prompto and shift their grip to match his.

"Make sure they're secure in your arms. If they are agitated, you can stroke their heads or rock them like this."

The level one he's holding is shivering and whimpering and clinging to him. Prompto looks at the number on the level one's wrist: 05953300. 3240 is not shivering or whimpering anymore, but he's still holding on like 3300 is. Now Prompto has two MTs clinging to him. "We need more blankets. It's cold outside because this facility is so far north."

"Outside?" someone echoes.

"Yes. Our new commander is far away. We'll have to travel to meet him."

"We're not permitted to go outside."

"That was before we were reassigned. Now that we have a new commander, there are new rules."

"Where is the manual?"

His heart sinks. He remembers how badly he wanted a manual during those early days in Lucis. He still wants a manual, but he knows now that there aren't any manuals outside the facility except for video game manuals. He knows that's not the kind of manual the MT is asking for. "We will receive instructions once we get there," he finally says.

They wrap the level ones in blankets. Some of the level ones have gone quiet, but others are still crying. They don't have time to comfort them until they stop crying, so Prompto tells the MTs holding the crying ones to keep gently rubbing their backs and heads.

They find a transport vehicle big enough to hold all of them and the key that matches it. Prompto has one of the level fours disable all the trackers on the vehicle, then he counts the MTs as they're climbing inside. Including himself and 3240 and 3300, there are 7 level fours, 11 level threes, 15 level twos, and 18 level ones.

He puts a hand on the arm of 05953179, the last level three in line. "How functional is your navigation element?"

"Navigation element functioning at 100%, sir."

The place where Luna lives is called Tenebrae. It's much closer than Lucis is. If he can get the MTs to Luna's house in Tenebrae, she can help. She's the only human he can trust outside of Lucis. He knows so much more than the other MT units who have never even seen the sun, but there's still so much he doesn't know. He needs a human's help. "Do you know how to drive this vehicle?"

"Yes, sir."

It's very strange to be called 'sir,' but the MTs need to follow his orders until he can get them to Cor. Then they can follow Cor's orders and he won't have to pretend to be important anymore.

"All right. If you drive the vehicle, then we won't get lost."

3240 still won't let go of him, and even though 3300's silent tears are making his clothes wet, holding the level one feels so pleasant that he doesn't put 3300 in the back with the others. He carries 3300 to the front of the transport and gets in, with 3240 climbing in after him. They sit on the long seat. 3179 gets in on the other side and puts his hands on the wheel.

"Let's go," Prompto says.

They go.

TBC


	3. Part 3

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 3 (rough draft)**

A/N: I'm so mad that both my parents get to stay home but I still have to go to work. (My mother's place of employment is closed; mine is closed to the public but employees still have to report to work; my dad gets to work from home.) No extra writing time for me, boo. X'''D At least I finally got this done! Wrote some of the next chapter and some future scenes, too.

o.o.o

Prompto has seen snow before, but not like this. There's so much of it in the air that they can't see anything through the windshield; it's just black and gray, with clouds of stormy white wherever the transport's front lights manage to penetrate. Using different modes of vision only reveals occasional trees on the sides of the road, and sometimes animals hidden in shelters or under the ground. The wind is so strong that the transport, even as big and heavy as it is, sways a bit from the force.

It's very cold. Prompto adjusts a set of controls on the dashboard until warm air starts to blow out of the vents. He keeps adjusting until the display indicates that warm air is also flowing to the back of the transport where the rest of the MT units are.

3300 is chewing on his own hand, his eyes wide and wet. His other hand grips Prompto's suit tightly. He looks scared.

3240 is clutching Prompto tightly, too, and his voice shakes when he whispers, "What's that sound?"

Prompto listens. "The - howling?"

"Yes.... Is it an alarm?"

"No. It's the wind."

3240 stares at him.

" 'Wind' is when the air outside moves quickly. Like how it feels when you stand close to a vent. There's a storm right now, so the wind is strong. The air makes that sound when it passes very quickly."

"...Oh." 3240 stares out the window. "It's loud."

"Yes. It's a big storm." There were a few storms back home strong enough to make the wind howl, but Prompto has never seen a storm as big as this one. He feels...worried. He wishes Cor was here, or Noctis. Cor would make him feel safe, and Noctis would distract him with a game or with talking. Right now, there's no one here except for scared MT units who don't know what games are.

He looks at the dashboard again and sees a set of controls that look like they might be for a radio. If there was music, it might cover the sound of the wind.

He presses a button. The radio turns on, and a man's voice starts speaking, rough with static. Prompto adjusts the buttons and knobs, and the sound changes. There are a lot of stations with people talking, but there are some that play the kind of music Noctis likes, with shouting people and tortured-sounding instruments or wailing people and nicer-sounding instruments. 3300 takes his hand out of his mouth and covers his ear again. Prompto keeps adjusting until he finds a station that plays the beautiful kind of music that Ignis likes.

3240 is staring at the radio now. "How many questions are we permitted to ask?" he says hesitantly.

"A lot. At the place we're going, it's highly encouraged to ask questions."

3240 stares at him.

"What's your question?"

"The sounds...what do they mean?"

He remembers that there was a time when he didn't know what music was. "It's music. Humans create it to sound pleasant."

"What is the purpose?"

He thought he already explained that. "To...to sound pleasant."

"...Humans create 'music' to sound pleasant when they listen to it?"

"Yes."

"There...aren't any humans here."

He thought that was obvious. "Yes."

"Is it permitted for MT units to listen to music for humans?"

Oh. "Yes."

"Oh."

There is a pause.

"I don't understand."

"Where we're going," Prompto says, "the rules are so different that it will take a long time to understand. But our new commanding officer and the other humans will teach us. They know how hard it is to understand different rules, so they don't decommission MT units for taking a long time to understand."

Even though he tried to be reassuring, 3240 starts to shiver, anyway. He doesn't ask anymore questions.

Prompto makes him hold 3300 so he can work on the radio again. He keeps it to the same station, but he adjusts until he thinks the radio is broadcasting into the back of the transport along with the front. He's not sure; he'll have to check when they stop.

After a while, 3179 says, "There is an obstruction up ahead."

Prompto's vision is back at default, he can't see anything through the windshield except wild snow. He tries different modes until he realizes that there's a checkpoint in the distance, with two humans huddled in the booth.

The MT units in this transport don't have authorization to travel. They won't be able to pass the checkpoint.

"We have to drive off the road," Prompto says. "Far enough around any artificial obstructions that we won't be detected. We need to keep the cargo safe."

3179 drives off the road. He has to go slower now to avoid clumps of trees, but they still press on at a decent pace. The music plays on, softening the sound of the wind.

o.o.o

After a long time, the wind dies down. The snow falls softly now, and the sky looks light gray instead of black. 3300 is asleep now, limp and heavy and warm against Prompto's chest, saliva leaking from his mouth. 3240 is not asleep, but he's leaning heavily against Prompto as well, silently listening to the music and watching the snow. Prompto feels limp and heavy himself, like he's not quite awake. He drifts.

o.o.o

When Prompto opens his eyes, the snow has stopped falling and he can tell from the sun that it's after noon.

3240 and 3300 are staring at the sun, completely transfixed. "Don't look directly at it," Prompto remembers to warn them. "It's so bright it will hurt your eyes." 3240 obediently looks away, but 3300 keeps staring, his eyes scrunched up. He's too small to wear sunglasses, so Prompto turns the level one's face into his chest. 3300 squirms and turns his head to stare the other way. The sun isn't shining directly from that side, so 3300 won't hurt his eyes now.

They stop after a little while because Prompto doesn't know the status of the other MT units and he's worried about them. When he opens the cab door, the cold hits him like a blow and he shudders as he steps out.

3300 makes a distressed sound and reaches for him. "Are you going far?" 3240 asks anxiously.

"No. I'm going to check on the other MTs."

"Is it a solo mission?"

He's leaning forward desperately, and Prompto realizes he doesn't want to be left behind. "You can come."

"Thank you," 3240 says immediately, scrambling to follow.

"It's cold," 3300 whimpers, his voice so soft that Prompto almost misses that he spoke.

"Yes. It's cold in Niflheim. It's warmer in Lucis." 3300 reaches for him again, and Prompto takes him out of 3240's arms. They all walk to the back of the transport and 3240 opens it.

Inside, the level fours and level threes are staring straight ahead. The level twos look dazed, some of them staring at the speaker where the music is still coming from. A few of them are asleep, leaning on the MTs next to them. A lot of the level ones are asleep in the laps of the older MTs holding them, and some of the awake ones are watching the speaker, too, and sucking on their hands. Two of them are huddled together under the same blanket, holding onto each other.

One of the level twos, 3228, is playing some sort of game with the level one 3299, who has his hand palm-up with fingers splayed. 3228 touches his second finger to 3299's second finger, then his third finger to 3299's third finger. 3299 is watching intently, but they both pause and look up when the door opens.

"Status check," Prompto calls. "Level fours?"

"Fully functional," 3104 reports. There's a pause, then he adds, "Lowest charge at 48%."

Prompto hopes they have enough energy packs to keep the level fours active until they reach Lucis. He doesn't know what they'll do when the packs run out - the Lucians don't have anything that will successfully plug into MT ports. "Level threes?"

"Fully functional," 3161 reports.

"Level twos?"

"Status of 3234 and 3240 unknown. All others fully functional."

"We are fully functional," Prompto assures 3221. "Do any of the level ones seem less than 100% functional?"

There's a pause. One of the level ones, 3284, starts to cry. The level three holding him tightens his arms a little and says, "Leak detected."

Prompto is alarmed until he approaches and realizes from the smell what the leak is. "Oh. That's okay." Urine is usually not dangerous, and it's not meant to be retained for too long. Expelling it will not hurt 3284. However, his clothes are probably unpleasant to wear now. "Is there anything to replace the suit with?"

There aren't any spare clothes in the transport, so Prompto bundles a blanket around 3284 after removing the soiled garment. All the other MTs are staring at Prompto very intently, and the level ones look anxious and scared. "You're dry now," he tells 3284. "If you need to urinate again, let someone know so we can let you out." 3284 keeps staring at him, looking very scared and clutching the level three hard.

It occurs to Prompto that when he goes back to sit in the cab, he won't have a way to communicate with the MTs in the back of the transport. "Does anyone have a set of communicators?"

There's a pause. Then 3104 says, "Level fours are capable of telecommunication."

That will work. "You can come in the cab with us when we start driving again." It won't be as comfortable with five MTs instead of four, but they'll fit, especially since 3300 is so small. "If anyone back here needs to contact anyone in the cab for any reason, the level fours can transmit to 3104."

The MTs are still staring at him. 3222 suddenly asks, "Are you authorized to administer corrections?"

Prompto stares at him. He doesn't understand for a moment, because he has never considered the possibility that he might be expected to correct other people. The thought makes him feel sick. "No."

"You'll report pending corrections to the new commander?"

"No one is getting corrected." He suddenly realizes why they're so upset: they think 3284 is going to be corrected for leaking urine. "No one will correct 3284 because he didn't do anything wrong."

The MTs are still staring at him. None of their expressions change; all except the level ones and a few of the level twos keep their faces completely blank. Somehow, Prompto can still tell that they're astonished.

"It's different there," he says. "It's better. They don't hurt us very often. They are gentle. They...apologize. And...." He doesn't know how to explain it to all these units, these people who share his face. These people are outside the facility for the first time in their lives, they've never had a human touch them gently and smile at them and tell them that they are loved. "It's better."

He looks out the open door of the transport, then back at them. "Come see the sun. Don't look directly at it."

At last, fifty MT units are standing in the snow, staring up at the sky. Prompto goes to get 3179 out of the cab, and now all fifty-one of them are together, marveling at the beauty of the incredible sun and the vast blue sky and the shining white snow. He tries to explain it all to them, and smiles when level ones tentatively touch the snow and squeal at how cold it is. Level twos marvel at how it melts if they hold it too long in their hands, turning their fingers blotchy and numb.

It's been a while since they had sustenance, so he gets everyone to drink some water. When most of them throw up as a result, he reassures them that they aren't malfunctioning and they won't be corrected, but they don't look like they believe him. The oily black vomit dissolves in the sun, leaving patches of bare ground.

The sun destroys the vomit because it's got Starscourge in it. Prompto remembers how long it took the first time for his body to finish replacing all the daemon blood with human blood. (He doesn't know why his body makes human blood instead of MT blood, but that's what the one with the white coat said.)

He feels...several feelings that are at odds with each other. He's been having treatments at the facility. The daemon blood enhances his hearing and vision and does other useful things, but it also makes him sick and makes his eyes red. The one with the club will be displeased that his eyes are red again. He doesn't know if he's glad or not to have daemon blood, but it doesn't matter. Eventually, his body will finish replacing it. Cor will be happy, so it's probably better not to have daemon blood, even if it means his vision will malfunction again.

The level ones have an easier time with the water, and he wishes he had some broth to give them, but the provisions are all dried. They'll have to have a heat source to prepare the food properly, but they've already lingered too long in one place and need to continue on.

TBC

A/N: I belatedly remembered that in PWS, the level two MTs had beds that Prompto was reminded of when he spent some time in a jail cell (as opposed to storage pods like most MT-Prompto fics have instead). It was too late to change it and it's not something I can fix in a later draft, so I'm just gonna apologize for forgetting!


	4. Part 4

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 4 (rough draft)**

The MTs climb back into the transport. It's gloomy, but the music is still playing, and several of the level twos and level ones turn their faces up to the speakers. "Are you tired?" Prompto asks 3179. "Should I ask 3104 to drive?"

"My mission is to keep the cargo safe," 3179 says.

"Does that mean you want to drive?"

"Yes, sir."

"You don't...have to call me 'sir.' My name is Prompto."

The MTs were already looking at him, but their stares turn...different. More intense. "You're 05953234," 3240 says.

"That's my designation. But Noctis - he's the son of the supreme commander - gave me a name, because names are important to humans. My name is Prompto Argentum."

"But...you're an MT unit," 3240 says in bewilderment. "MT units...don't have names."

"We don't at the facility. But Cor, my commander, wanted me to have a name, and so did Ignis. All the humans there wanted me to have a name, and Noctis gave me one. I'm Prompto."

None of the MTs say anything, so they shut the doors and get in the cab and 3179 starts to drive. 3104 sits at the other end of the long seat, and the level twos are squeezed in between, so close that they're pressed right into each other. 3300 sits on Prompto's lap.

The level one is still absently grasping Prompto's shirt, but he's staring upward. Then he points. "What's that?" he whispers.

"That's the sky. Or the sun." He doesn't know which one 3300 is pointing to. "The sun shines in the sky."

3300's hand falters. Then he stretches it again, but now all the fingers are extended and Prompto realizes he's reaching for something. He's reaching for the tiny stuffed chocobo dangling from the top of the windshield.

"Oh." Prompto pulls it down and gives it to him. "That's a representation of a chocobo. Chocobos are good. Most of them are yellow, like this one." He likes yellow.

3300 stares at the little chocobo in fascination, squeezing it in his hand. Then he looks up at Prompto and...smiles. Except 'smile' doesn't seem like - a big enough word. It's-- He _smiles_. His teeth are showing, his eyes seem...very bright. It's almost like his whole face is a light. And suddenly, Prompto finally understands 'simile' and 'metaphor,' because 3300's face is not the sun, but it...is like the sun. It reminds Prompto of the sun, because it's so bright and beautiful and makes him feel so happy to look at.

"Like sunshine," Prompto whispers. 3300 finally takes his other hand away from Prompto's shirt so he can investigate the chocobo some more.

Prompto closes his eyes and thinks. He's not sure if he's allowed to name people. It doesn't feel right, and he never even thought about naming someone before. They all already had names, anyway, except some of the animals. But...but he thinks...if he gives 3300 a name, and he gets it wrong or isn't allowed...Cor won't punish him. No one will hurt him. They'll just explain in their gentle way why he was wrong.

So...so even if he's wrong to name 3300, nothing bad will happen. He will be a little sad if he can't call 3300 by the name he gave him anymore, but at least he'll have some time. Until they get to Lucis. He can...see what it's like, to call someone by a name that he gave them. "Sunshine," he whispers. "I want to name you Sunshine."

3300-- Sunshine looks up at him. His eyes are wide and curious.

"Sunshine," Prompto tells him. "That's your name. Maybe Cor will change it, but for now...hello, Sunshine."

Sunshine tilts his head curiously and puts a hand on his face. The hand is sticky with half-dried saliva, but it's very small and somehow it still feels pleasant. Then Sunshine takes his hand away again and looks back at the chocobo.

3240 is staring at him. "You're permitted to give names to MT units?"

Prompto doesn't know. "I wasn't forbidden to give names to MT units," he says, because it's true, and the MTs won't believe him if he says he won't be corrected for getting it wrong.

"Is it...permitted for me to have a name?"

"What name do you want?"

3240's eyes widen. "D-Doesn't someone else have to give me a name?"

"They like it when we name ourselves." He hadn't understood that back then, at the meeting where Ignis asked him to choose a name. Now he understands. But 3240 is so...new, he probably won't believe he's allowed to choose a name. "But you don't have to. I chose the name Noctis already gave me."

"Oh." 3240 presses his palms together. "Do you...already have a name to give me?"

He doesn't. But, "If I did, what sort of name do you want?"

3240 goes tense. Then he suddenly bursts out, "I'm so tired of being _scared_ all the time!"

They drive for a while in silence as Prompto thinks. Then he says, "Maybe if people talked to you like you're brave, it would help you be brave instead of scared."

There's some more silence. 33-- Sunshine tries to show the chocobo to 3104, but the level four keeps staring straight ahead.

"I would like people to call me brave," 3240 finally whispers.

Prompto smiles at the level two. "Okay. Then your name is Brave now. Hi, Brave."

Brave's mouth twitches, and his eyes look both hopeful and scared he glances up, then back at Prompto. "What's high?"

"It's a greeting. When you see someone after going a while without seeing them, you say 'hi.' Hi, Brave."

"But you've seen me."

"I've seen you as 3240. But now I'm seeing you as Brave."

Brave's mouth twitches again. "Oh.... Hi, 3234." Then his eyes widen. "I mean-- Hi, P-Prompto."

"You did a good job," Prompto says. Praise is important when someone learns something new.

Brave smiles a little bit. Then he looks at Sunshine. "Hi, Sunshine."

Sunshine shows him the chocobo. "It's yellow."

"Yes."

They drive on, falling quiet as the sun sets and shines its rich colors across the horizon. Prompto holds Sunshine in his arms and leans closer into Brave. It feels good.

o.o.o

They drive for a long time, heading for what 3179's navigation element says is the border between Niflheim and Tenebrae. They make several stops to take care of their bodies, but never for long. Prompto, once he finally succeeds in making soup out of the rations, puts a bite in his mouth to demonstrate how to eat and nearly spits it out again. They have to eat it, though, because there's no other sustenance, and they'll get sick if they don't eat.

He's worried about the energy levels of the level fours. He watches the needle on the fuel gauge creep lower and lower and worries about that, too.

3179 finally lets another level three drive so he can sleep, but he's awake again and driving when they're inside Tenebrae.

He's driving slowly now. He and Brave and Sunshine and even 3104 are staring. Prompto is watching out the window and crying because the bright green color is so beautiful, and he suddenly remembers that this is the first time the other MTs have seen plants. "We can stop for a little while," he says.

He lets everyone out of the transport. They stare and stare at all the green and the flowing water, and some of them reach down to touch the leaves and grass at their feet.

"The green things are called plants," he explains after a while. "There are many different kinds of plants. The ones that look like hairs growing out of the ground are called grass. Those brown pillars are trees, and the green parts growing from their branches are leaves. Those colorful ones are flowers."

They stay there for a long time, looking. He tries to explain, but after a while they start looking confused and unhappy, so he stops. At last, when he starts to worry about pursuers, he gathers up as many flowers and leaves as he can carry and passes them around so the MTs can look at them while they're shut inside the transport again.

They drive on.

o.o.o

It takes several tries before Prompto is able to specify in a way that 3179's navigation element understands, but it finally works when he uses Luna's last names instead of her first name.

They stop far enough away that the transport is still hidden in the trees, and Prompto gathers all the level fours and all the sniper-class MTs. The rest stay behind to guard themselves and the level ones. He wanted Brave and Sunshine to stay in the transport as well, but Brave cries and begs Prompto to ask 'the commander' if it's permitted for him to help on the mission, so Prompto relents. Sunshine cries too loudly when they try to put him down, so they bring him along as well.

"You should keep holding him," Prompto realizes. Sunshine is chewing on his fist again, clutching Brave with his other hand and staring at Prompto with wet eyes. "Try to keep him quiet." It's a good way to keep them both out of the way. He likes Brave, but Brave doesn't shoot well enough for this mission.

"Yes, sir. I mean-- Yes, Prompto."

Prompto looks at the snipers, who are all watching him. He has to write the instructions on a notepad he found in the transport - he doesn't want the enemy MTs guarding the house to overhear and realize they're planning to attack. _"We need to spread out under cover and surround the house,"_ he writes.

"What's a house?" someone asks.

_"That building is a house,"_ he writes, and points. _"At the signal, we all shoot at once and kill the rogue level fives."_

"What's the signal?" someone asks him.

_"I'll tell 3104, and he'll tell the other level fours. The signal is when the fours start to shoot."_

It's easy after that. The fours split up and accompany the younger MTs farther into the trees. Prompto stays with 3104 at his side and Brave and Sunshine crouched behind a boulder nearby. They wait until everyone is in position.

Once 3104 signals that everyone is ready, Prompto lifts his gun. "Tell them now," he says to 3104. Then he starts shooting, each bullet reaching its mark.

Other shots are ringing out as well, and the level fives guarding the house drop quickly, before even getting to return fire.

It's quiet for a moment. "Tell them they can come back now," Prompto says. Then he uses different modes of vision to determine whether there are any Imperials in the house. He doesn't know for sure, but he can tell that all the humans inside are not moving like soldiers would. He cautiously steps into the open, holding his gun ready.

It's very quiet. He reaches the front door and knocks.

He has to knock two more times before he hears a voice call through the door. He sharpens his hearing.

"We won't let you hurt the Oracle!" the voice calls. It's a woman's voice. He thinks it might be Maria.

'The Oracle' is Luna. "We're not going to hurt Luna," he calls back.

"Who are you?!"

"Prompto."

There's a pause. Then the door cracks open, and Maria peers through it. Her eyes are very wide. "Prompto?"

"Yes."

She throws the door open wide. "Good heavens, I--!" She looks at something behind him. "Sweet Shiva...."

Prompto looks back. Brave is standing a few steps behind him, his face pale. He has a hand on Sunshine's head, and Sunshine is clutching at his leg.

Prompto looks at Maria again. "They're my brothers." They don't match the definition, not exactly. But Cor isn't a dad the way the one with the club and the one from the phone are dads, yet he is still definitely Prompto's dad. The other incomplete MT units who left the facility with him and marveled at the sun...they are close enough to the definition to be his brothers. They feel like his brothers. "I brought them here because we need help."

"Oh...bring them in, then," Maria says, stepping aside.

"Yes. I have to get the others."

"Others?"

He goes back into the woods to tell the snipers to go into the house. Then he goes to the transport to fetch the rest. Brave and Sunshine follow him. When Prompto reaches the house again with the last of his brothers, Sunshine is pulling at his suit, so he picks up the level one to carry again. Sunshine lays his head against his shoulder, and it feels pleasant.

It's very crowded in the house. MTs are filling the front hallway and the rooms on either side of the hallway. Maria and the other 'servants' are all on the stairs, looking surprised and scared.

"I brought them," Prompto says. "Where's Luna?"

"Sh...She's...!" Maria's eyes are still very wide as she stares down at all the MTs. The MTs stare back.

TBC


	5. Part 5

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 5 (rough draft)**

A/N: Aahh, I meant to update this sooner! But I had to update my outline (all done; main story's fully outlined! I still have to do the other stories in this AU, though), and I procrastinated and got distracted and sucked into reading longfics.... DX Finally got my act together and finished this, though! Hopefully there will be less of a wait for future updates.

o.o.o

There's the sound of a dog barking, and the servants shift as two animals push through them. The MTs back away, too, looking alarmed, and the dogs come right up to Prompto. Umbra slides his whole body against his leg, and Pryna wiggles a lot as she yips and spins in circles and then rises up to brace her front paws on his chest and lick his face.

He's happy to see the dogs again, and Pryna is so excited that it makes him feel excited, too. "Hi, Pryna," he says, petting her. He looks down at Umbra, who's looking up at him and panting. "Hi, Umbra."

Pryna drops down and whines, and then he realizes that Sunshine is crying, clutching him hard and pressing his face into his shoulder. "Why are you crying, Sunshine?" He's so happy to be here and to see the dogs and plants again, he doesn't understand how anyone could be unhappy.

The level one doesn't answer. Pryna whines again and licks Sunshine's ankle. Sunshine stops crying and stares down at her.

Someone else is coming, calling out as the servants make way for her. "I'm so sorry about the dogs, little one! They mean you no harm."

That's Luna's voice. It's Luna. It feels good to see someone who's a friend. "Luna. Hi."

"Oh, Prompto, I'm so relieved!" She puts her arms around him and hugs him, and he tries to hug her back while holding Sunshine with one arm. They hold each other for a long moment, and then Luna leans back. She's not smiling anymore. "Oh-- Prompto, you...!" She lays her hand against his forehead. She looks scared. "Do you feel ill?"

"No. Only hungry."

She stares at him. "I...I sense the Starscourge in you, but at this stage you ought to be in terrible pain. I don't understand why you seem so healthy."

"Oh - yes. It's the daemon blood. They inject us with it at the facility. My body will make new cells over time and replace the daemon blood until it's all gone."

She stares at him. "I-- Stars, we need to talk about this...later, I suppose." She looks at the other MTs. "My goodness! All these are...?"

"They're my brothers. They were in the facility, too, but we left. We're all going home together."

Luna steps away and clasps her hands in front of her. She bows to all the MTs. "I am very pleased to meet you all. Although my home is not as safe as I would like it to be, you are all welcome to rest here before continuing on your journey."

The servants look even more surprised. "Lady Lunafreya...!"

She turns to the man who spoke. "Yes?" There's something hard in her voice.

"They're...they're Niflheim soldiers...!"

"They are refugees, many of them children," she says, "and I thank you all for treating them with the compassion and courtesy that befits the Nox Fleuret name." There's a pause, and the servants bow their heads. Luna smiles again and turns back to him. "You all must be so tired, Prompto. I'm afraid it will take a little time to prepare enough food and beds for everyone, but we'll work as fast as we can."

"We don't have enough beds for them all," Maria says. "The manor was only meant to accommodate this many people for social functions - we don't have the capacity for such a large number of overnight guests. Some of them will have to double up or sleep on sofas."

"Well," Luna says, "we're meeting basic needs, not hosting a ball, so I think we'll manage." She smiles at Prompto. "Come, my friend."

She leads him to the big room with the soft couches and the big screen, and the sound of many feet follow after them. When she turns the screen on, it shows a video of a person sitting at a desk and talking while soldiers fight behind him, but Luna quickly 'changes the channel.' The images on the screen flash very quickly and make him a little dizzy, but then it stops on a video of a person with fluffy gray hair sitting on a stool, moving a stick with paint on one end over a paper set upright in front of him.

_"Now we're going to fill in the leaves,"_ the person says in a quiet, gentle voice, and the view changes to show a closeup of the stick. There are soft bristles at the end. The person's hand moves steadily to dab many splotches of paint over the paper. _"We're filling in the foreground now, and in just a minute we're going to use a lighter color for the leaves in the background...."_

"Do you think this will keep them occupied while they're waiting, Prompto?"

He blinks. He was focusing so intently on the screen that it feels like waking up to hear Luna talking to him. He looks around, and all the other MTs, his brothers, are staring at the screen with the same intensity. "Yes. What are they waiting for?"

"Well, I thought they'd like to clean up a bit before we eat."

It turns out that she means they're supposed to take showers, but there are a limited number of hygiene chambers. Luna sends the first group along with a servant, and when Prompto watches them go, he sees other servants hurrying back and forth along corridors and up and down stairs, carrying blankets and towels and brooms and other instruments he doesn't know the function of. All the servants look very busy and a little worried.

Then he remembers that Luna talked about eating. "My brothers aren't very skilled at eating yet," he tells her. "They won't be able to eat anything but soup for a while." He remembers that even soup had been too much for him at first. "Or...broth. Broth is the easiest thing to eat, because it's like water."

Luna looks at him. Her eyes are wide. "Perhaps you'd better come down to the kitchen and advise Jenna."

They go to the kitchen. Brave and Sunshine and 3179 follow after him. 'Jenna' turns out to be the person in charge of cooking, and she is upset. "There's only three of us, it will take hours to make even the most basic meal for fifty people, my lady! We're not even finished with our usual work yet!"

"I can call in some help," Luna says.

"Who? I'm sure they're all racing to get the bedrooms readied in time!"

Luna looks...unhappy. And worried. She looks at him. "I'm so sorry, Prompto. There might be...even more of a wait than I expected."

"I can help," he says. "I'm not...getting a bedroom ready in time. So I can help cook."

The one in charge of cooking makes a snorting noise.

"Do you know how to cook?" Luna asks.

"Ignis taught me."

"Oh! That's wonderful, Prompto. Yes, if you can help, that would be greatly appreciated."

He washes his hands, and directs Brave and 3179 to wash theirs. Then he asks the one in charge of cooking for a book of recipes. She frowns at him, but finally she goes to a shelf, pulls a book down, and gives it to him. He flips through it until he finds a recipe for chicken broth. He props the book open on the counter, asks the one in charge of cooking for the ingredients, then starts instructing Brave and 3179 on how to prepare them.

It takes a long time because the recipe only makes enough broth for four to six people and they need to make enough for 51 people. While Brave and 3179 are cutting vegetables, Prompto goes to get some more help. Sunshine follows after him, so he picks up the level one because it feels pleasant to hold him. Sunshine is still holding the chocobo. "It's yellow," Sunshine tells him, holding it up.

"Yes." The chocobo is yellow.

In the room with the screen, most of the MTs are watching the video of the person putting paint on paper. Some of the level ones are playing with Pryna, who jumps around and tackles them and licks them until they laugh. Two level twos are sitting on the ground, petting Umbra. Umbra is stretched out with his chin on his front paws and his eyes closed.

Prompto brings some level twos and level threes back to the kitchen with him. He assigns them places along the counters and the table in the middle, and gives them instructions and demonstrations. The one in charge of cooking and the other two humans look at all the MTs in the kitchen and look nervous, but they don't say anything.

The broth doesn't smell right, and when he tastes it, it tastes terrible, like greasy water. Like...like how broth used to taste, when he first came to Lucis. He wonders if he did something wrong to make the broth taste bad, but the one in charge of cooking tastes it and says there's nothing wrong with it. She looks surprised.

When the first batch of broth is finished, the two younger humans put it into bowls and then take the bowls away. Prompto and his brothers keep working. Sunshine is lying curled up on a box. Prompto goes to check on him, and when he finds that Sunshine is asleep, he looks around for a blanket to put on him. There aren't any blankets, but there's a large empty bag, so he lays that over Sunshine instead. Sunshine stirs a little. He doesn't open his eyes, but he makes a small sound. The sound makes Prompto's chest twinge. The twinge feels painful, but in a good way. Prompto wonders if he loves Sunshine.

When the last batch of soup is ready, Prompto puts two bowls of it on a tray, one for him and one for Sunshine, because the one in charge of cooking says that Sunshine is too small to carry his own bowl. Sunshine is not happy to be woken up and makes noises like an unhappy animal, but when he sees that everyone is leaving the kitchen, he curls his fingers in Prompto's suit and follows him.

All the older MTs carry their own bowls. One of the humans shows them to a room with a very long table. At one end of the table, servants are picking up empty bowls and cleaning the table's surface. At the other end of the table, more of Prompto's brothers are still eating their broth. Prompto tells the ones from the kitchen that they're allowed to sit down, too, and he shows them how to eat.

The broth still tastes bad. He hopes that when his body makes enough new cells to replace the daemon blood, he'll be able to start tasting food properly again.

Sunshine is too short to reach his bowl, so a servant brings a wooden block for him to sit on. He is very messy as he eats: broth gets all over his hands and clothes and the table. A servant brings a straw for him to use to suck up the broth instead, and after Prompto teaches him how to use it, he spills a lot less.

At one point, Prompto gets a strange feeling, like something's crawling on his skin. He looks up, and he sees a person in the entryway. She has long black hair and her eyes are closed, but it still feels like she's looking straight at him. He can't look away, and his skin feels like things are crawling on it. Then the one with the closed eyes finally turns and walks away, and once she's out of sight, he can breathe again.

Once everyone is finished eating, more servants show them upstairs. On the platform with the wall where there are two sets of stairs that branch off in either direction, the servants try to make some of the MTs go one way, and other MTs go the other way. The MTs looked scared and look back at Prompto. "Is that an order?" he asks.

The servants stare at him. "Er...no, Mr. Argentum," one of them says. "It's simply that we need every Upstairs bedroom in the house to accommodate you all, in both the guest wing and the Family wing. Not everyone will fit in only one wing."

"Oh." He doesn't really understand. "Maybe we can all go in one direction, and then when we see how many will fit, the rest of us can go in the other direction."

The servant who spoke bows. "As you wish, Mr. Argentum. I'll take you to consult with Lady Lunafreya."

At the top of the stairs is a long hall with lots of open doors. Servants and MTs are going in and out of all the doors. When Prompto sees Luna near the end of the hall, he goes to talk to her. "Luna."

"Oh! Prompto." She's smiling, but it's a strange smile. Her hair doesn't look as tidy as usual, and she's panting a little. One of the level ones is clinging to her skirt. "My goodness, there are so many, I'm afraid I'm running myself a bit ragged-- Has anyone told you what we propose for the sleeping arrangements?"

"No."

"Ah."

Luna calls for Maria, who has a diagram, and they explain. They tried to get the level fours to take off their armor, but the armor is bolted on and there is no equipment in the house to remove it safely. Maria thinks it's better if they let experts in Insomnia remove the armor, and for now, the fours will sleep on cots in a place called a 'ballroom.'

"Oh," Prompto remembers, "the level fours. They might need to recharge. They haven't had any fuel since we left the facility."

"Recharge?"

"Yes. They have charging ports, but I don't know if there's anything to plug into them outside the facility. If their charge goes down to 0%...I don't know if they'll die or not. I don't want them to die."

"Oh my goodness! Well, we have some Lightning flasks, and young Seymour is good at electronics; perhaps we can rig something workable."

Luna is very careful feeding lightning magic into the fours' charging ports. She makes sure all of them are charged at least 90%, and then she and Prompto and Maria help them lie down on cots. "Are you in pain?" Prompto asks 3112.

"No, sir," 3112 says.

Prompto looks at 3112. The level four is lying on a cot with most of his armor on, but they were able to remove the helmet, so Prompto can see his face. His expression is very blank, but then his eyes flick to Prompto. They look at each other for a while. 3112's fingers tighten in the blanket for a moment, but then relax again. His hands are bare because they were able to get the gloves off, too.

"You are my brother," Prompto tells him. "I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to bring you and all our brothers safe to Lucis. Then you won't have to be scared or hurt anymore."

"Yes, sir," 3112 says. His face and voice are still blank.

"I...I don't like it when you call me 'sir.' You should call me 'Prompto.' "

"...Yes, Prompto."

"Someday you'll have a name, too." Prompto moves his hand. Under his fingers, 3112's hair is stiff with dried sweat. The level fours weren't able to shower because they couldn't get the armor off without hurting them. "I feel affection for you, 3112."

3112 blinks at him and doesn't say anything. Prompto puts a kiss on his forehead and straightens up. He looks at the other cots, then goes to put kisses on all the other level fours. Sunshine follows after him and touches the fours with his mouth, too, but he's too small to reach their foreheads, so he mostly puts kisses on their shoulders instead.

They go back upstairs, and Maria takes out the paper with the diagram again.

There are seven bedrooms in the guest wing and seven bedrooms in the family wing, but one of the rooms belongs to Luna's brother, so only six bedrooms in the family wing are available. Luna says she's going to be too busy to sleep much tonight, so some of Prompto's brothers are welcome to use her bedroom as long as they don't mind her bustling about and using a lamp or two so she can pack her things. The level ones are very small, so all of them can sleep together in two of the biggest beds. A few MTs will have to sleep on sofas, but most of them will be able to fit on the beds in the other rooms.

Some of the MTs are still showering, and others are putting on clothes the servants gave them, soft shirts and pants to sleep in. Prompto helps Luna and Maria make sure that all of his brothers are clean and wearing the right clothes and have a place to sleep.

"You can put him down right here, dear," Luna says to the level two 3228, who is holding the level one 3299. She gestures at the bed, where several level ones are sitting with a pile of blankets and pillows.

3228 looks scared, but he tries to set 3299 on the bed. 3299 whimpers and clings to him harder. 3232, who is supposed to sleep on the sofa, is watching. When 3299 doesn't let 3228 put him down, 3232 looks scared and tries to pull 3299 away to put him on the bed. When 3299 resists, 3232 whispers to him, "They'll correct you if you disobey orders!"

3299 sobs and lets go. He sits on the bed crying, and the other level ones start to cry, too. Two of them, 3287 and 3290, cling to each other tightly and hide under a blanket. 3232 tries to wipe the tears off the ones' faces and cover their mouths, but there are too many level ones and only one of him. 3228 stares at Luna and covers part of his face to hide the way his mouth twists, but his eyes are shiny with tears, too. Sunshine is sobbing and clinging tight to Prompto.

Luna looks horrified. "Oh, my darlings, please don't cry! Darling," she looks at 3299 and gently brushes the tears off his cheeks even though he keeps leaking more to replace them, "it's all right if you don't want to sleep with the other children. Would you rather sleep with your friend instead?" She looks at 3228.

"They're scared," Prompto says. "They think that humans will correct them for being disobedient and malfunctioning."

Luna stares at him. "Correct them?"

"Hurt them. To make them function correctly."

Luna gathers 3299 and the level one next to him, 3288, into her arms. She sits down on the bed and hugs them close, rocking them. Then she starts crying. Everyone is so surprised to see a human cry that they stop crying and stare at her.

"You're safe now, darlings," Luna says. Her voice is thick and difficult to understand. "You're safe here. No one will harm you under my roof, I swear it. They'll have to go through me first."

3228 is allowed to pick up 3299 again and hold him. 3299 hides his face in 3228's neck. Luna tells Maria that the two of them want to sleep in the same bed. Maria sighs and writes something on the diagram she made.

It takes a long time, but everyone is finally assigned a place to sleep. In Luna's bedroom, she touches Prompto's arm. She looks tired. "Prompto, dear," she says, "I don't think we're going to get a better chance, and I'd like to try to heal you now."

"Heal me?"

"Yes. Here, sit down on the bed."

He sits. Luna sits next to him and takes his face in her hands, resting her forehead against his. She starts to murmur, and then...and then there's light. Luna's glowing with yellow light. Then something like black smoke starts to come out of him, more and more--

There's a pain in his head, and Luna gasps. Her hands tighten a little, and he feels dizzy. The black smoke is thick, and the pain goes away. He feels sleepy. Then--

He's lying on the bed. He's lying on his back. He's blinking up at the ceiling, and his vision is blurry. Luna and his brothers are leaning over him. They all look worried. "Prompto?" Luna says. "Are you all right?"

He feels...good. He feels good. He sits up.

His vision is blurry, and it doesn't change when he tries to adjust it. He tries to access his elements, but...he can't. Some of them he can't feel anymore, and others won't respond to him. It's like in Lucis, after there was no more daemon blood in his body, before the one with the purple hair took him back to the facility. He looks at Luna. "You took away all the daemon blood?"

She smiles. She looks tired. "Yes."

"My vision is blurry."

Brave gasps, and Prompto realizes that he just admitted to a malfunction. But Luna won't hurt him, so it's safe to tell her that he's malfunctioning.

"Oh!" Luna says. "I still have your glasses - here." She hurries to her desk and opens a drawer, then comes back. She's holding the glasses she gave Prompto the last time he stayed in her house.

He puts the glasses on. "Thank you."

His brothers are staring. Sunshine reaches to grab the glasses and pull them off his face.

"Sunshine, I need to wear those to correct my vision." He takes the glasses back and puts them on again. His vision is still blurry, but in a different way. He takes the glasses off, uses his shirt to rub away Sunshine's fingerprints, then puts the glasses back on. His vision is clear now. "It's a modification," he explains to his brothers, "but it's not painful."

Luna turns on a lamp and turns off the overhead light. Prompto and Brave and Sunshine and 3179 all lie down on the bed and Prompto helps them pull blankets over themselves. Sunshine falls asleep quickly, and saliva starts to leak out of his mouth onto Prompto's chest.

Prompto can't sleep. His head feels too full of things, and he keeps hearing Luna and opening his eyes to watch her. She's moving around, filling a suitcase with clothes and a bag with objects. After a while, she runs out of room in the bags, but she still has more objects to put in them. She stares at the bags for a while. Then she takes half the clothes out of the suitcase and fills it with books instead. She empties out the bag, pushes some of the things aside, and puts the rest back, then adds different things.

Prompto thinks about his brothers. He thinks about how much farther they have left to go before they reach Lucis. He thinks about Cor, and Noctis. He wonders what they'll think when he comes back home with a lot of brothers. He wonders if Cor and Noctis and Ignis and Gladio and everyone else at the Citadel will like his brothers, if they'll be just as kind and gentle to them as they were to him.

He's still thinking when he falls asleep.

TBC

A/N: Oh my gosh, this happened with _The Birds Who Smile_ , too; I spent at least an HOUR simply trying to figure out sleeping arrangements for all these crazy kids. X'''D

**erarlumo a.k.a. katagiriemily did art for this fic! :D[They designed uniforms for the younger MTs and training armor for the level fours.](https://katagiriemily.tumblr.com/post/614755628230049792/some-mt-uniform-sketches-from-leading-my-brothers) ^^ **


	6. Part 6

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 6 (rough draft)**

**Stuff I forgot to include in the previous chapter: Brave was supposed to comment on Prompto's newly blue eyes after they got into bed (I'd had the line in the original draft, removed it with the intention of putting it somewhere else, then forgot to put it there *facepalm*). Also, I meant to mention the dogs again before Prom went to sleep.**

o.o.o

When he wakes up, the room is filled with sunlight. He moves Sunshine aside and sits up.

Brave and 3179 are both awake, still lying in bed as they look at the window. Prompto gets up and goes to take a shower. When he finishes, he doesn't know what clothes to put on, so he goes to the wardrobe to see if there's anything clean he can wear.

Luna has a lot of clothes, and they're all very pretty and interesting. He picks the most interesting one to wear, though it takes a while for him to figure out how to put it on. Then he goes into the room with the sofas.

The one with closed eyes is there. Prompto ducks behind the door again, feeling his skin creep. He hopes she didn't see him.

She's setting a tray down on one of the small tables. Luna and Pryna are asleep together on one of the sofas, and Umbra is lying on the floor with his eyes half-closed. The one with closed eyes moves some things around on the tray and murmurs something.

Luna shifts and groans, pressing her face into Pryna's fur. Pryna's eyes blink open, and she raises her head and makes a soft sound at the one with closed eyes. Then she rolls over and starts licking Luna's face until Luna laughs and sits up.

Luna and the one with closed eyes talk in quiet voices for a while, and Luna starts to eat something from the tray. The one with closed eyes steps back, bows a little, and then leaves the room. She looks like she's gliding instead of walking.

Prompto is glad she's gone.

He waits for a minute to be sure she doesn't come back, then he comes into the room with the sofas. Pryna makes a short, loud sound and looks at him, her mouth open wide and her tongue hanging out. She looks happy.

"Good morning," he says.

"Good mor--" Luna starts to say, then she looks at him and chokes on her food.

"Luna!" He hurries over, but he doesn't know what to do. She coughs and presses a hand against her chest, then stares at him. She's not choking anymore. He's relieved.

"P-- Prompto! Did you...find that in my wardrobe?"

"Yes." He looks down at the dress. It's white, like a lot of things in Luna's wardrobe were, but it's covered with swirls of tiny clear stones that sparkle and shine in the sunlight. It's very pretty.

"Oh goodness.... L-Let me see if I can find you something more comfortable...!" She looks like she's trying not to laugh now as she hurries into the bedroom. He follows after her. The dress is loose and doesn't cover much skin in some places, but in other places, it's tight and makes it hard to walk and bend. It's very pretty, but Luna's right that he needs to wear something more comfortable. They're probably going to travel today, and he has a lot of brothers to look after now.

Luna gives him some different clothes, a black shirt with stars dotted all over it and a pair of sturdy pale blue pants. He puts them on.

While he's getting dressed, Luna goes over to the bed, smiling. "Hello, my dears. How are you?"

Brave and 3179 sit up and salute. Brave looks scared. "Yes," he says.

Luna frowns a little, then smiles again and puts her hand on Sunshine. She shakes him gently. "It's time to wake up, darling."

Sunshine doesn't obey for a while. He curls up and rolls over and whines. But Luna doesn't get angry or impatient, she just keeps gently shaking him or running her fingers through his hair until he finally opens his eyes.

He stares at her, then sits up quickly and clutches his chocobo to his chest.

"Do you all want breakfast?" Luna asks.

They look at her. Their eyes are wide.

Prompto remembers that they don't know what 'breakfast' is. " 'Breakfast' means food that you eat in the morning. Sustenance."

Brave looks down at his own stomach. 3179 stands up.

It takes a long time, but they finally get all the MT units awake and showered and dressed and brought downstairs to eat. There's already enough broth for everyone this time.

After breakfast, Luna starts to pull MT units aside and touch her forehead to theirs, making all the daemon blood come out of them. It's still a long way to Insomnia and they might need the soldiers' abilities, so Prompto tells her it would be better to only heal the level ones for now.

After she heals three of them, she sways and has to go to sleep on a sofa for a while. "Is she our new commander?" 3237 asks.

"No. Cor is our commander. He's my dad."

"What's a dad?"

He tries to remember what Cor told him that day in the blue room when he said Prompto was permitted to choose a dad. "A dad is someone who looks after you, and makes sure you're happy and gives you things you need."

Everyone is staring at him very intently now. "Are you our dad?" 3222 asks.

He's...surprised. He's surprised. "No - I'm your brother."

"What's a brother?"

"When two people - or more than two - have the same dad, then they're brothers."

"Is Cor our dad?"

He's about to say 'yes,' but then he thinks about the house by the park. He thought it was a big house, but when he tries to imagine all his brothers living inside it, he realizes that the house is too small. There's not enough room for all fifty of his brothers and himself and Cor. "I don't know," he says. "I'll ask him when we get there."

Luna sleeps until one of the servants comes back from town with fuel for the transport. Then things happen very quickly - Luna goes to get her suitcase and her bag, and the servants give the MT units bags and crates of supplies to carry. Now that they're ready to go, they have to leave as soon as possible in case anyone from the facility comes to stop them.

Luna hugs Maria for a long time, then other servants come up to her and she speaks to them and reaches for them. She looks at them all and tells them that she is grateful for everything they have done for her family over the years.

The level one 3288 is holding onto her leg. When Luna finishes saying goodbye to the servants, she reaches down to hold 3288's hand, and she grasps the handle of her suitcase with the other hand. Then she walks out the door. Pryna and Umbra walk beside her with their tails wagging. Prompto holds Brave's hand and Sunshine's hand, and he follows them.

Outside, the transport is hidden in the trees, but it's not very far. Prompto has to remind his brothers to keep walking because they keep stopping to stare at the sun and the plants. He's so busy reminding them that he doesn't notice anything wrong until Luna stops and he almost runs into her back.

There's a person leaning against the transport. She has long silver hair and black armor, and her arms are folded. She's smiling a strange little smile as she looks at them.

Luna lets go of 3288 and pushes him behind her. There's a flash of light, and suddenly she's holding a trident. "I'm going to respectfully ask you to leave," she says. Her voice is loud and firm.

The one with silver hair smiles wider. "I don't think so, princess."

Luna wants the one with silver hair to leave, but the one with silver hair isn't leaving. Luna is holding a weapon ready, so that means the one with silver hair is an enemy. Prompto draws his gun, and he hears rustling as all the armed MTs behind him draw their guns, too. The one with silver hair isn't attacking, she's only standing there and smiling, so he doesn't aim. But he holds the gun ready, and waits to see what Luna will do.

"What is your business here?" Luna's voice sounds tight. She looks angry.

The one with silver hair straightens up and puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head, leaning back on one foot, but she still doesn't attack. "I got hired to hunt down an army of rogue MTs who 'vanished into thin air.' " She says 'vanished into thin air' in a strange way, like she's...teasing. Or maybe disgusted. He can't quite tell what that tone means. "Finally managed to track 'em down when I stopped thinking of them as malfunctioning robots and started thinking of them as escapees."

He hears more rustling behind him. His brothers are scared to hear a human say they are malfunctioning. The one with silver hair hasn't made a move to correct them yet, though, so he keeps waiting.

"Well," Luna says, "since there are no MT units here, only children and refugees, I'm afraid you're not going to find what you seek. You may leave."

He doesn't know why Luna is lying - he and his brothers are clearly MT units.

The one with silver hair isn't looking at her anymore, though. She's looking at him. She ambles over to him, not looking scared of the guns at all.

She stops in front of him and looks at his face for a while. He looks back, watching her hands, but she still doesn't make any move to draw a weapon. Then her eyes glance down, and she crouches to look at Sunshine. "Well, hi there."

Sunshine hides behind his legs and whimpers. Prompto crouches down so that his whole body is shielding Sunshine's whole body. Now he's face-to-face with the one with silver hair again.

The one with silver hair looks back at him. "Cute little brother you got there."

"Yes." Sunshine is cute and he's little and he is Prompto's brother.

The one with silver hair tilts her head. "You're awful protective for a malfunctioning robot."

Brave, trembling beside him, makes a small noise.

"I'm not a robot," Prompto says. He wonders why so many humans outside the facility think that MT units are robots.

"Huh. But you are an MT, though."

"Yes." The one with silver hair doesn't argue like Cor and Noctis and the others always do.

"Not a very good one, apparently."

Brave makes the small, scared noise again. Prompto doesn't say anything. It's true: he's a bad MT unit. He realized he could either be a perfect MT unit or he could be a severely malfunctioning one that acts like a human. He chose to be a malfunctioning one, and Cor and the others were pleased. He was pleased, too. He doesn't want to be a good MT unit even...even if he's corrected for it.

He wonders if the one with silver hair will try to correct him. He thinks...if she does, he won't be able to adequately protect Sunshine and Brave and all his other brothers. And he has a weapon in his hand. So he thinks if she tries to correct him, he will use the weapon to stop her before she can succeed.

But the one with silver hair just keeps looking at him and talking. "Leading a revolt and adopting toddlers and everything. It's almost like you're human."

"I'm not a human. I'm an MT unit." She's right, though, that he seems like a human because he does a lot of things that MT units shouldn't do.

"Yeah? Prove it. I'm curious. Drop your gun and stand aside."

If he drops his gun, it will be more difficult to protect his brothers. If he stands aside, Sunshine will no longer be shielded from danger. So he can't drop his gun or stand aside, even though she told him to.

His mouth suddenly feels dry.

She smiles at him. "That was a direct order. Drop your gun. Stand aside."

He...he can't drop his gun. He can't stand aside. He has to protect his brothers.

But she ordered him to disarm and move away. She's a human, and she gave him direct orders. They were very clear.

He can't obey them. He can, but he won't. He won't. Because if he obeys them, his brothers will be hurt. And he would rather be hurt than let them get hurt. So he disobeys the orders. His stomach churns, and his heart beats very fast. He realizes he's shaking. It's hard to breathe. He thinks he might throw up. But he listens to Sunshine crying behind him and feels Brave trembling beside him, and he keeps disobeying orders.

He raises the gun and cocks it. The one with silver hair doesn't do anything, so he doesn't shoot her. But if she tries to hurt him or his brothers, then he will. He's ready. He feels sick and he can't breathe, but he's ready.

The one with silver hair grins widely and stands up.

His legs feel shaky and weak, and they won't hold him up anymore. They collapse under him, and he sits on the grass and hopes he won't throw up. Pryna trots behind him and there are wet noises; Sunshine stops crying and sounds surprised.

The one with silver hair isn't looking at him anymore. She steps in front of Luna and says, "See, here's the thing: I'm a mercenary, and a damn good one. Once I've signed a contract, I don't back out - it'd be bad for business. Only exception is if a competing contract comes along that promises enough to make it worth the trouble, or if it turns out I was hired under false pretenses."

"I certainly don't have enough money to tempt you away from whatever the empire has promised you," Luna says. She sounds angry. Or...not angry, exactly. But something like anger. "Tell me, what is the going rate for delivering children into slavery?"

"I don't hurt kids. That's one of my rules. I signed up to hunt robots, and instead I found _this_." The one with silver hair gestures at the MTs. Prompto's brothers are all clustered together, waiting, watching him and Luna and the one with silver hair, holding weapons ready or shielding level ones. "Now, I _could_ just turn around and leave. Contract's nullified, anyway, since they broke my rules. I go my way, you go yours, I sign up for the next job, you probably get captured. No skin off my nose."

Luna doesn't say anything. It's very quiet except for the sound of level ones crying softly.

"Or," the one with silver hair says, " _you_ could be my next job and _not_ get captured." She smiles. "Up to you, princess."

Luna's jaw clenches. She finally says, "Most of the Oracle's income goes toward fulfilling the duties of the role and maintaining the property. I didn't have many liquid assets to draw on."

"You're not broke, though. Let's see it." The one with silver hair holds out her hand.

Luna glares at her for a minute, but finally she takes out a small bag and drops it into the one with silver hair's hand.

The one with silver hair glances into the bag. Then she grins and tosses the bag straight up and catches it again. "I look forward to working with you, boss. We can settle the paperwork en route. My name's Aranea Highwind, by the way."

She turns and starts to stride away, but then pauses and looks at him. He scrambles to get to his feet. His heart is still beating a little too quickly, but he doesn't feel so sick anymore.

"Oi, shortcake," she calls. She's looking right at him, so he thinks he's probably 'shortcake.' "I'll bring my ship around. You load up the transport with your brothers and drive it into the cargo bay."

"I don't know how to drive," he says.

She rolls her eyes. "Just get it into the cargo bay, I don't care how. You're going to need it once we reach Lucis." Then she leaves.

He looks at Luna. "I don't understand."

Luna looked so strong and angry before, but now she looks shaky and sick and worried. 3288 is holding onto her again and pressing his face against her leg. She reaches down to stroke his hair. "I...oh, Prompto, I pray this isn't a mistake...."

"What's a mistake?"

She smiles at him. The smile looks shaky and weak, too. "I believe I have just hired a mercenary to escort us to Lucis. If she holds to her word, then...it means we're safe, and we have a much better chance of reaching Lucis than if we had tried to drive there ourselves." She closes her eyes. "If she proves to be untrustworthy, then...."

He waits, but she doesn't finish the sentence. After a minute, she opens her eyes and looks at Umbra. He wags his tail and looks back. She looks at Pryna, who has finished licking Sunshine's face and is now licking Brave's hand. Brave's mouth wavers in an uncertain smile as he watches Pryna.

Luna takes a deep breath. She picks up 3288 and looks at Prompto again. "We _will_ reach the Crown City safely." Her voice sounds firm and strong again.

He feels relieved, and glad. 'The Crown City' is Insomnia, where Cor and Noctis and everyone live. He wants very much to reach the Crown City safely with all his brothers and see the people he loves again. "Yes."

TBC

A/N: I don't know where Luna stores her trident when she's not using it. Unless/until I find out otherwise, I'm gonna assume she has a magic Oracle Armiger or something. X''D


	7. Side story: Change of Plans

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Side story: _Change of Plans_ (rough draft 2)**

Aranea puts down the binoculars and just stands there for a while in disbelief. They really are people, not robots. _Kids_ , over half of them teenagers or freaking toddlers. The only thing weird about them is that they all look the same, probably clones or something; otherwise, they are just a bunch of scared kids huddled together or following the manor's inhabitants around like little ducklings.

This...changes things. A lot.

Aranea puts a hand over her face and sighs in exasperation. Then she gets to work.

o.o.o

It's kind of hilarious when they finally make their move: the Oracle exits the house with light luggage, apparently intending to make her escape along with the baby MTs, and the MTs in question come streaming after her like a flock of chocobos.

Aranea watches as they make their way up to the woods where the transport is hidden and tries not to smile too much as she holds her pose. She's a hardened mercenary trying to make an entrance, not a high schooler cooing over pictures of cute puppies.

The Oracle notices her first, coming to a stop with shock and then dread and then anger passing over her face. She lets go of the tiny MT she's been holding by the hand and protectively pushes him behind her before summoning a weapon. "I'm going to respectfully ask you to leave."

Nice. The tough act is a complete bluff, but Aranea respects it. "I don't think so, princess."

Slight movement and a chorus of rustling and clicking sounds alerts her to the fact that the MTs are drawing their weapons, but she notes that their body language is wary and prepared rather than aggressive. They aren't going to attack just yet.

The Oracle distracts her for a minute, demanding an explanation for her presence and trying to urge her away, but her attention keeps going back to the MTs. Or, rather, to one in particular, one of the teenagers.

There's something different about him, and it's not just the fact that he's the only one with freckles, the only one wearing glasses, and the only non-toddler with blue eyes instead of red. It's not even the fact that he's clearly wearing girls' clothing, a black blouse and capri jeans; many of the other MTs are wearing a motley collection of Tenebraean clothing presumably from the manor.

What truly stands out is his expression and the way he stands. Most of the others are either frightened or blank, but Shortcake, as she idly decides to nickname him, is clear-eyed and unafraid as he watches the exchange. The other teenager he was holding onto before drawing his gun is huddled into him like a child hiding behind its mother, and his free hand is still clasping that of one of the toddlers.

Aranea approaches to get a better look. Shortcake continues to watch her, shifting just slightly to edge his fellow MTs a little farther behind him. His gun sways a little but his hand around it doesn't tighten. He returns her gaze easily, wary and waiting.

Then she makes the mistake of glancing down at the little one. The kid is so _cute_ , she actually loses interest in his big brother and crouches down to get a better look. "Well, hi there."

The baby MT (though the term 'Magitek Trooper' is a stretch, since except for the barcode on his little wrist, he looks entirely like a human child) whimpers and hides behind his brother's legs, proving that he can actually raise his cuteness levels. Aranea has a split second to wonder how best to soothe that frightened look off the tyke's face when Shortcake suddenly crouches down, hiding the little one entirely from sight and commanding all her attention. His expression is hard and protective.

"Cute little brother you got there," she says, trying to be conciliatory.

"Yes," he answers simply. He's kind of cute, too, in the way small children mothering even smaller children are cute.

"You're awful protective for a malfunctioning robot." She is very curious to know why Shortcake is so different, acting far less programmed and traumatized than the others.

"I'm not a robot."

Clearly. "Huh. But you are an MT, though."

"Yes."

"Not a very good one, apparently." He's pretty much the opposite of an ideal Magitek Trooper.

Shortcake doesn't respond to this, though his twin is getting worked up about something. Aranea isn't even really paying attention to the clingy twin, she certainly didn't mean to scare him.

She challenges Shortcake to set aside his mother hen instincts, just to see what he'll do. Real MTs would obey the order without question or hesitation, but sure enough, Shortcake doesn't exactly hop to it. He does, however, finally start to look a little frightened.

It's kind of mean, but she pushes a little more. "That was a direct order. Drop your gun. Stand aside." Not that she's planning to actually do anything if he does, but she's intrigued to see whether the conditioning or his evidently sweet natural heart will win out.

The struggle is clear on his face, and she starts to regret the experiment a bit when he has what looks like a mini panic attack. She's just about to call it off when he finally raises his gun and cocks it. He doesn't try to shoot her, but he's clearly prepared to do so if she threatens what he's protecting.

She's actually rather proud of him. She can certainly respect that kind of loyalty to one's comrades - to _family_. These golden-haired children with a shared face and shared pain are brothers in every way.

She smiles and stands up, caught between guilt and amusement when Shortcake collapses as the tension breaks. There's no way she's letting the Empire get their hands back on this gutsy, kind-hearted kid and his flock.

She turns her attention to the princess, the one most likely to have money. Aranea knows these refugees most likely can't afford her usual rate, but she _is_ a mercenary, when it comes down to it. She'll need at least a token payment.

The Oracle's not happy about it, but she eventually gives in. Aranea smiles at the sight of fancy gold coins in the bag; they're not very practical for everyday use (how was the lady planning to use them, anyway? Hand over clearly Tenebraean gold coin to pay for food or fuel or lodging worth a fraction of the value?), but they _are_ worth enough to not make this smuggling run a total financial loss. Besides, Aranea can exchange the currency far more easily than a fugitive princess can. "I look forward to working with you, boss."


	8. Part 7

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 7 (rough draft)**

A/N: You guys remember that chapter in _Poor Wayfaring Stranger_ where Cor gave Prompto The Talk? If that squicked you out, maybe skip the last scene of this chapter.

**Make sure you don't miss the Aranea's POV side story I posted a minute before posting this chapter!**

o.o.o

There isn't enough room in the ship for everyone to get out of the truck, but the one with silver hair says they can take turns. Every thirty minutes, a group of MTs will have to get back in the truck so that another group can come out and 'stretch their legs.'

"Is it a figure of speech?" Prompto asks.

The one with silver hair looks at him. "What?"

" 'Stretch their legs.' Is it a figure of speech?"

She snorts. "Yeah, kid. Just means you can walk around instead of staying cramped in the truck the whole time."

"Yes." He turns to his brothers, who are all watching him from inside the truck except for Sunshine, who is holding onto his leg, Brave, who is holding onto his hand, and 3179, who is watching from where he's standing by the driver's side door. "Humans often use 'figures of speech.' They're very confusing and frustrating. You have to learn them one by one and there are a lot. 'Stretch your legs' means that you can walk around instead of staying cramped in the truck the whole time."

He looks back at the one with silver hair, who's watching him with her head tilted. "Hey - come with me, kid. I wanna hear your story, but we gotta hit the road first." She pauses, then she smiles. " 'Hit the road' means we need to start traveling."

"Oh. Thank you."

She snorts. "Sure, kid." She looks at Luna, who is in the truck trying to climb over all the legs of the MTs who are sitting down. "What about you, boss?"

"I have work to do," Luna calls back. "There are a lot of little ones who still need healing, and then I'll probably need to sleep for a while."

"Don't overdo it." The one with silver hair looks at the closest level three. "Oi, you. If she collapses or gets sleepy, bring her up to the front and I'll show you where the cabins are."

"Yes, sir," 3170 says immediately, but his eyes look a little panicked.

"The front of what?" Prompto asks, because he knows 3170 will be too scared to.

The one with silver hair looks at him, then at 3170, and raises one eyebrow. "The front of the ship. That's where the cockpit is; either me, Biggs, or Wedge'll probably be there."

"What are Biggs and Wedge?"

The one with silver hair lightly slaps her hand over her eyes for a moment. "Look, just hunt around until you find someone who doesn't have your face, and we'll show you where to go."

"Yes, sir."

The corner of the one with silver hair's mouth quirks up a little, then she looks back into the truck. "Oi, all you ones with armor, get up. You're coming with us, too." She gestures and turns away. Prompto follows her, and because Brave and Sunshine are holding onto him, they follow, too. 3179 comes after them, and so do all the level fours.

They walk to the front of the ship, where two male humans are talking to each other as they look at a screen. They turn around when they hear the one with silver hair and the MTs coming in. Their eyes widen and they jump back.

"At ease, boys," the one with silver hair says. She drops into the biggest chair and starts working at the control panel. "It's just our latest cargo. Look over the armored ones, make sure they don't have trackers or anything like that."

"Uh...you got it, Lady A...."

The ship shudders as it starts to leave the ground; Sunshine stumbles and makes a squeaking sound. Prompto puts him in one of the chairs. He and Brave and 3179 hold onto each other and the chair so they don't fall as the ship climbs into the sky. Then the motion levels out and they can see from the windows that the ship is soaring steadily.

The one with silver hair makes her seat turn around so that she's looking right at them. "So," she says. Then she tilts her head. "You can sit down, you know."

He starts to walk to another chair, but Sunshine scrambles out of his chair and runs to grab onto him. Brave is still clinging to him, too, and that makes it hard to sit down. When he finally manages it, Brave is folded up beside him, looking a little squashed, and Sunshine is in his lap. 3179 is standing beside them.

The one with silver hair has a strange expression, like her face is trying to smile but not quite. "They're pretty attached, huh."

"Yes." Brave and Sunshine are both holding onto him, so they're attached to him.

"You're different than the others."

He doesn't understand. "No. I'm an MT unit. We're all MT units."

She's not almost-smiling anymore. "The others all look fresh out of the test tube, but you, kid...you've been out of the tube for a while now, I'd bet."

It's been a long time since he was inside a tube. "Yes. Cor found me. He's my dad now. He and Ignis and Noctis and everyone I love and like have been teaching me how to be a civilian. So I know more things than my brothers do."

The one with silver hair stares at him. "Cor and Noctis. As in Cor the Freakin' Immortal and Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum of Insomnia?"

"Yes."

She makes a long whistling sound. "If you were in Lucis, how'd you end up back in Niflheim?"

"We were at the festival and Cor told me to follow him, but it wasn't Cor, it was the one with purple hair. I don't know why he looked like Cor. He stopped looking like Cor on the ship, but I couldn't get off the ship and find Cor. I couldn't get off the ship until we were in Tenebrae instead of Lucis. The one with purple hair gave me to Luna. I like Luna, but I wanted to go home, but I didn't know how to get home. Then, a few weeks later, the one with purple hair came back and took me away from Luna, and--"

He stops. He has to swallow. Trying to talk about this part makes his throat ache.

After a while, the one with silver hair says quietly, "And?"

"And...he took me back-- to the facility. And I was...scared. Really scared. But...I couldn't get out. And I thought...maybe I would never get out, unless Cor found me again. I thought about Cor a lot. But he didn't come. Pryna came, but Cor didn't.

"And...and then 3222 killed the instructor so that Brave wouldn't die, and I realized that there weren't any humans alive in the room anymore but there were a lot of MT units who had weapons and weren't locked up. And even in the rest of the facility, there were only a few humans, but a lot of MT units. Level ones and twos and threes and fours, who aren't perfect yet and can still be 'rehabilitated.' So I thought maybe, if we got all the imperfect MTs and killed all the humans and level fives, we could get out. And we did. And now we're going home. And I'm going to teach my brothers how to be civilians so they can be happy and not scared or hurt anymore."

His arm hurts. He looks at Brave. "Brave, you're holding my arm too tightly." Brave's grip loosens, but he's still shaking, and his eyes are shiny with tears as he looks at the one with silver hair. He looks terrified - maybe because he doesn't realize that the one with silver hair isn't like the humans at the facility, that she probably won't correct MTs for talking about feelings and killing other humans. Prompto pulls his arm all the way out of Brave's hands so that he can put it around his brother's shoulders. "It's okay. You don't have to be scared. I'll protect you."

He looks back at the one with silver hair, who's laughing quietly. "Six, shortcake. That's amazing."

"Are you going to correct us for having feelings and killing humans?"

"Pfft, no. You do realize you're human, too, right?"

That's what everyone in Lucis says, too. It used to bother him a lot, but now he knows what to say: "We're just gonna have to agree to disagree."

The one with silver hair bursts out laughing. Prompto looks at Brave. "She said she's not going to correct us."

"Really?" Brave whimpers, so softly that he can barely hear it.

"Yes." Prompto puts a kiss on the side of Brave's head. "You're safe."

The tears burst out of Brave and he starts to sob, and turns his face to hide it in Prompto's shoulder so the one with silver hair won't see. She can still hear him crying, though. Everyone can hear him crying. But she doesn't look at Brave, she just gets up and walks over to the male humans and the level fours and asks, "How's it going?"

"All clean so far, Lady A," one of the humans says. "We found trackers, but they were already disabled. Some of these fellas are making transmissions, but extremely short-range; I think they might actually be talking to each other. In their heads, you know? The signal strength is too weak for anything else."

"Huh. Well, keep at it."

"Will do, Lady A."

o.o.o

After a while, one of the humans shows them around the ship. 3170 comes to tell Prompto that Luna fell asleep in the truck, and they carry her to a 'cabin,' which turns out to be a room with a bed in it. 3288, the level one who likes to hold onto Luna, climbs onto the bed after they put Luna on it and curls up close to her.

More MTs have come out of the transport by now, and they are wandering all over the ship. 3231 accidentally knocks a box off a shelf, and all the small pieces inside scatter across the floor with a crash. One of the humans shouts, and 3231 scrambles to pick up the pieces. When Prompto kneels down to help, Brave and 3179 copy him, and then Sunshine starts to pick up pieces, too. Even the human gets down and picks up pieces.

Once everything is back in the box again, 3231 stands in front of the human and bows his head, waiting to be corrected.

"Uh," the human says, and then pats 3231's shoulder. "Just, uh. Be more careful, okay? And don't touch anything." He turns to Prompto. "You're the one in charge, right? You're Shortcake?"

"My name is Prompto Argentum."

"Er...right. Just, um, try to keep your brothers out of trouble, okay?"

"Yes."

"Good man." The human hits Prompto's shoulder the way Noctis and Gladio and Arcis sometimes do, and then he walks away.

3231 stares after him. Then he looks at Prompto. "Is he...going to correct me later?"

"I don't think he's going to correct you at all."

There's a long pause. Then 3231 starts to cry. Prompto hugs him, and his brothers copy him again, and then all five of them stand there for a while, performing a 'group hug.' It's very pleasant, except for 3231 crying.

"You don't have to cry anymore," Prompto tells him. "No one's going to hurt you."

"Why not?" 3231 wails. "I dropped the box."

"It's okay. Humans outside the facility don't get angry about things like that."

3231 cries some more, and they keep doing the group hug for a long time.

o.o.o

One of the rooms on the ship is called a 'common room,' and it has a deck of cards in it. Prompto sits at the table with Sunshine in his lap and Brave, 3222, and 3223 also sitting at the table. 3179 stands behind Prompto, and 3221 stands behind 3222. Prompto is teaching them how to play cards.

He's just finished explaining the card deck and is about to teach them the rules of a game when one of the male humans comes in. 3223 immediately scrambles to stand at attention, and 3222 follows a second later.

"Oh!" the human says. He sounds surprised. "Uh...sorry, didn't mean to interrupt." He looks at the cards. "Whatcha got there?"

"They're playing cards."

The human smiles a little. "Yeah, I see that. You teaching your brothers how to play?"

"Yes."

"Mind if I join?"

"You can play with us if you want."

"Thanks, kid."

Prompto and the human play a practice game together first, as a demonstration to the others. Then Prompto gets up and lets 3222 sit in his chair, and 3221 and 3223 hesitantly sit down when he tells them to. They start the game.

For a while, it's quiet except for the human making pleased or displeased noises sometimes when cards are revealed. At first, he looks mostly pleased, but as the game continues, he looks more and more unhappy. Then he shouts, "Fuck!" and throws all his cards on the table. 3221 and 3223 jump at the noise, and Prompto can see 3222 grasping his gun under the table.

But the human doesn't shout anymore or try to hurt anyone. He groans and rubs at his eyes for a minute, then he takes his hand away from his face and smiles. "Well, looks like you got me fair and square. Carry on, then." He stands up and gestures.

The MTs don't move. 3221 and 3223 stare at him, frightened, and 3222 is still holding onto his gun under the table.

"You're not in trouble," Prompto tells them. "The three of you should keep playing until there is only one winner."

They glance at each other, then back at the human. "Sir?" 3221 whispers.

The human looks surprised. "Yeah, go ahead."

The MTs' shoulders are stiff, but they resume playing. They play much faster now, and very soon, 3222 huffs and puts his cards down and stands up. 3221's and 3223's hands keep moving rapidly, and a few seconds later, 3221 puts his cards down and stands up. 3223 nervously looks at Prompto, then at the human, then back at Prompto.

Prompto smiles at him. "You won," he says. "You did a good job."

"Shiva's tits," the human wheezes. "Those scores are off the _charts_...! What _are_ you kids?!"

"We're MT units."

The human laughs a lot. Then he claps Prompto on the back. "You sure are something, anyway." He looks back at 3223. "Good game." He's still chuckling as he leaves the room.

3221 exhales and 3223 gets up to hold his hand. They stand very close together and start to make their breathing match.

3222 looks at Prompto and asks, "What is 'fuck'?"

Oh. "It means something's bad. Sometimes it also means 'to have sex with,' but...it's difficult to tell which meaning to use in which context." He thought that one was an adjective and one was a verb, but then he heard someone say 'Fuck me' in a context that didn't seem like it had anything to do with sex, so now he's not sure anymore. He's not supposed to say the word, anyway, so it's not important.

The one with silver hair comes in and the other MTs go stiff, but 3222 doesn't notice her because she's directly behind him. She opens her mouth as if she's going to say something, but 3222 asks, "What's sex?" before she speaks. The one with silver hair's eyes widen and she doesn't say anything after all.

Prompto does his best to explain sex, but it's very difficult because he still doesn't really understand it himself. For some reason, the one with silver hair is grinning widely and holding up her phone like she's recording, but she doesn't say anything, so he doesn't say anything to her, either.

At the end of the explanation, 3222 says, "I don't understand."

"I don't really understand, either," Prompto confesses. "Humans are strange sometimes." Then he remembers something important. "Don't ever let anyone touch your penis. It's incorrect touching." Cor was so angry when Prompto got lost and let someone touch him incorrectly.

3222 stares at him. "Why would an MT unit touch my penis?"

Prompto doesn't think an MT unit would ever touch anyone's penis. "I don't know. I meant, don't ever let a human touch your penis."

3222 stares harder. "I can't stop a human from doing anything to me."

The one with silver hair isn't smiling anymore. "Hey," she says, and 3222 snaps around to stare at her, terrified. She puts her hand on his shoulder and shakes him a little. "Shortcake's right. Anyone ever tries to touch your dick, you kick 'em in the balls, all right? That's an order."

3222 now looks confused in addition to terrified.

"She means if anyone ever tries to touch your penis, your orders are to kick their testicles," Prompto explains. He wonders why anyone would give an order like that. It would hurt someone a lot to kick their testicles.

The one with silver hair bows over for a moment, her arm still around 3222 so that she looks like she's hanging from him. When she straightens up again, she's smiling. "All right," she says, taking her arm off of 3222, "C'mon, shortcake, I need you to wrangle one of your brothers."

TBC

I wrote this in the initial draft, but had to cut it when my choreography later changed:

The one with silver hair bows over for a moment, her arm still around 3222 so that she looks like she's hanging from him. When she straightens up again, she's smiling. "All right," she says, taking her arm off of 3222 and giving him a small push toward the door, "all of you, scram. I need to talk to shortcake for a minute."

The MTs dart panicked glances at him. They don't know 'scram,' so they don't know how to obey the order.

"She means 'go away,' " Prompto explains.

Slowly, the MTs obey. Brave is the last to go, a tear slipping down his face as he looks back at Prompto. Then he leaves, still holding Sunshine.

"Quite the big brother you are," the one with silver hair says.


	9. Part 8

_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ , a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl

Part 8 (rough draft)

**A/N: I double-posted last time; make sure you didn't miss either the Aranea POV side story or chapter 7!** I've found that with double-posting, non-subscribers sometimes miss the first chapter, and AO3 subscribers sometimes miss the second chapter. X''D

Also, I forgot to include some major details in Aranea's story. *facepalm* **She was supposed to notice that Prompto's eyes are blue instead of red, that he's wearing girls' clothes, and that some of the other MTs are wearing random Tenebraean clothes from the manor.**

o.o.o

3221, 3222, and 3223 stay in the common room, but Brave, Sunshine, and 3179 come with Prompto as he follows the one with silver hair through the ship. They reach a room with a plaque by the door that says 'Engine Room.' The one with silver hair leads them to the far end, where the level three 3175 is sitting on the floor, surrounded by tools and bits of machinery. He looks up when they approach and goes very still.

"He's been fixing stuff for hours," the one with silver hair says. "Doing a damn good job of it, too, but by now he'll probably be needing to, y'know, eat. And pee. Noticed the older ones clam up around us humies, so I figured you could explain the concept of breaks to him without giving him a heart attack."

Prompto is pretty sure she means 'breaks' in the context of 'periods of rest and refreshment.' "Yes." He didn't even know that any of his brothers were in the engine room at all, much less for hours.

"Are you keeping track of everyone, by the way? Making sure you don't lose anyone on this little field trip of yours?"

He really hopes they don't lose anyone. "I count whenever we get on or get off a transport. I want to make sure I always have fifty brothers and Luna."

She smiles. "You're a good big brother."

He feels his chest swelling, and he realizes he's smiling. "Yes. I love them." The words come out, he didn't even think about them beforehand. But he thinks it's true: he loves his brothers. All of them, not just Sunshine or Brave. He hasn't even talked to all of them yet, but he loves every single one. Looking at them makes him feel like he wants to protect them and make them happy.

The one with silver hair smiles back and performs the head-rubbing gesture on him. Then she leaves.

Prompto looks at 3175 and 3175 looks back, clutching the tool he was holding. "Am I going to be corrected?" 3175 asks.

"No. But the one with silver hair wants you to stop working for a while so you can urinate and eat something."

3175 looks down at himself. "I need to urinate," he says, as if he only just now realized it.

"Yes."

3175 stands up and Prompto takes his hand, and they all walk around until they find a latrine and then one of the male humans, who shows them where the 'mess' is. The mess is a room that looks a little bit like a kitchen and has food in it. "Help yourselves," the human says. "Just remember that we have a lot of mouths to feed."

o.o.o

By the time the ship lands in Lucis, Luna is awake. She and Prompto collect all the MTs and count as they get into the transport. "We're missing one," Luna says. She looks worried.

Prompto counts again, this time by level groups. It's a level three who's missing, and suddenly he thinks he knows who it might be. "I'm going to the engine room," he tells Luna. Brave and Sunshine and 3179 try to follow him, but Luna tells them they should stay with the transport.

Brave turns his face away and Sunshine starts to cry. "I'll be back soon," Prompto says. But Sunshine keeps crying, and screams when Prompto walks away, and there's an unpleasant painful feeling in Prompto's chest. He looks back and sees Luna hugging Sunshine and murmuring to him, and 3179 watching him. 3179 is standing right at the corner of the transport, watching Prompto, and it's hard for Prompto to look away and keep walking.

He goes to the back of the engine room and there's 3175, working on machinery again. "3175," he says, "it's time to go."

3175 looks at him, and then at the machinery. There's a long pause. Then he looks back at him. "Is that an order from the humans?" he asks.

"No," Prompto says. He's surprised. 3175 looks like he doesn't want to do what all the other MTs are doing, and Prompto doesn't know why.

"Will I be corrected if I don't go?"

"No."

3175 looks down and starts working again.

"3175, all our brothers are on the transport. We're in Lucis. We're going to drive to Insomnia soon."

"I don't know what 'brothers' are. I know what these are," 3175 says, still looking at the machinery he's working on. "They are functioning inefficiently and require adjustment."

"But...3175...if you don't come to the transport, you'll be left behind. You'll be alone except for the one with silver hair and the other two humans."

"Do the humans here do more painful things to MT units than the humans at the facility do?"

"No."

3175 keeps working on his machinery. Prompto doesn't know what to do. Finally, he goes back to the cargo bay. The one with silver hair is there, talking to Luna. As soon as Prompto walks in, 3179 straightens up, and Sunshine runs to him. Prompto picks up Sunshine. Brave is standing very close to 3179, looking at Prompto with a relieved expression.

"3175 won't come," Prompto says. Luna and the one with silver hair stop talking and look at him. "He wants to stay and work on the machinery. He won't come."

"Oh dear," Luna says.

"Hmm." The one with silver hair leans back and crosses her arms. "Any particular reason why all fifty of you have to stay together?"

"3175...he's not in the facility anymore. He can look at the sun and plants now, and he can eat good food and sleep in a warm bed, and he can make images and listen to music and no one will correct him anymore. But those things are in Insomnia, and Cor is in Insomnia, and Noctis and Ignis and...everyone...but he won't come."

The one with silver hair walks to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. "You know, kiddo, there's plenty of that stuff outside Insomnia, too. And seeing how good he is with machinery and that he's had some combat training, I wouldn't mind making him part of my crew. You got any objection to him staying with me?"

Prompto stares at her. She means...she means that 3175 won't come back with them to Insomnia. He'll...he'll stay here instead, and...he won't be with his brothers.

Prompto's chest hurts.

Luna hops down from the transport and catches 3288 when he falls trying to follow her. She carries 3288 over to where Prompto is standing with Sunshine and the one with silver hair. "Let's go talk to him," she says.

3175 looks up when he sees them approaching. He stands up and salutes and stares straight ahead. "At ease, kid," the one with silver hair says. 3175 looks at her warily.

"My dear," Luna says, "is it true that you would rather stay here on this ship than accompany your brothers back to Insomnia?"

"I will follow orders."

"There are no orders, darling. We're simply asking you which option you would prefer."

"...The equipment...could function better than it currently does," 3175 says very softly. He's trembling a little.

Luna nods. "Though Commodore Highwind has been very kind thus far, I have only just made her acquaintance and cannot vouch for her. However, I have known Prince Noctis and King Regis of Insomnia for many years, and I trust them to treat you well. Knowing this, do you still prefer to entrust yourself to the mercy of Commodore Highwind?" Luna asks, gesturing at the one with silver hair. "Or will you trust Prompto, one of your own?"

3175 looks between them. The one with silver hair raises an eyebrow. 3175 turns to her fully and salutes.

"Ah," Luna murmurs. "So be it, then." She turns to him and takes his hand not holding Sunshine with her hand not holding 3288. "Prompto, dear, he will be unhappy if we force our own preference on him against his wishes."

"I feel sad," he bursts out. His chest hasn't stopped hurting. "I love all my brothers and I want them to be happy. But 3175 won't come home with us, and I feel sad."

"Hey, it won't be forever, kid," the one with silver hair says, putting her arm around him. "We can figure out how to arrange visits, and if things don't work out, I'll find a way to send him back to you. I'll look after him as long as he's part of my crew, got it?"

"I still feel sad."

Luna says to 3175, "If you ever change your mind or need to get a message to us, call for Pryna or Umbra. Do you understand?"

"Yes." 3175's face is blank, but from the way his fingers clench a little, Prompto thinks he doesn't really understand.

"Pryna and Umbra are the names of the dogs," he says. "Call their names, and they'll come. You can put letters in their pouches, and they'll bring the letters to Luna." He remembers that MT units are less scared to talk to him than they are to talk to humans. "Or to me."

Luna looks at the one with silver hair. "I would like to heal this young man before we go."

They all go to the cabin where Luna slept earlier. While Luna is making the daemon blood in 3175 disappear, Prompto looks at the one with silver hair. She's going to look after 3175 now. She's going to be responsible for giving 3175 what he needs, and she said that there were good things like plants and music outside Insomnia, too, so he thinks she'll try to make him happy. "You're going to be 3175's dad now."

The one with silver hair's eyes widen. "Huh?"

"It's very important that you're a good dad. The humans at the facility hurt 3175 a lot, but now that he has a dad, he has someone who will look after him and explain things to him and give him good things. I don't want him to be scared or hurt anymore, so it's important that you do a good job."

Her eyes soften, and she smiles. "Is that an order?"

His heart flutters nervously. "I'm an MT unit. I don't give orders to humans."

"Uh huh." She looks like she doesn't believe him, but she's smiling. He suddenly remembers that female parents have a different title than 'dad,' but he forgot what it was. The one with silver hair still seems to understand, though.

When 3175 opens his eyes again, they're a very light shade of purple instead of red. Luna helps him sit up, and he looks down at himself. 3288 pats him. Luna looks at the one with silver hair. "I know he doesn't have a given name yet, but he might consider 'Argentum' as a family name."

"I'll keep it in mind." They all walk back to the cargo bay together. Prompto hands Sunshine to Brave, who whispers, "It's good that you came back."

"I'll always come back. Can you help me find a comm?"

Luna is still holding 3288, and the one with silver hair is talking to 3288 in a strange way, her voice much higher than usual. She's not looking at the other MT units. Prompto takes the comm back to 3175 and presses it into his hand. "This is for you," he says quietly. "Try not to let the humans see it. If they hurt you or you want to come be with us, if Pryna or Umbra won't come, you can call us with this. I'll make sure you can come home."

3175 looks at him. He doesn't say anything, but he tucks the comm into his clothes.

"I'm going to hug you," Prompto says. "That means I'm going to squeeze you with my arms. It's an expression of affection. I care about you and I'm sad you're not coming with us and I hope you are happy here." He hugs 3175. Then he steps back and counts everyone again and then climbs into the transport. They drive out of the cargo bay. A few minutes later, he hears a noise behind the transport, and he looks back to see the airship flying away.

Now there are only fifty MT units and Luna instead of fifty-one.

TBC

A/N: Several people have asked about the MTs' ages. Going by the info in _Poor Wayfaring Stranger_ , and given that this AU takes place roughly a year after PWS (or at least a year after Prompto's stay in the blue room, I have no idea how much time PWS is going to end up covering), the ages in this fic are as follows: the level ones are 3 years old, the level twos are 15 or 16, the level threes are maybe 18, and the level fours are in their early 20s.

Holy crap, it's been like two and a half months since I last updated.... This story has been on my mind the whole time, I've been really wanting to write it, but it seems I have finally developed some discipline and have been focusing on _Gifts From the Sea_ in an effort to prove that I can actually finish a longfic. Unfortunately, my newborn commitment to older projects leaves me very little time for fics for my current fandom (FF15) ._. I only have about an hour per week to work on FF15 stuff, and I've been using it to chip away at _Shelter_ , since that story's closer to being finished. But I decided to dedicate all of today to Promised Land, and I might experiment with alternating GFtS and Promised Land updates rather than focusing entirely on GFtS.


	10. Part 9

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 9 (rough draft)**

A/N: I messed up the choreography a bit at the very end of the last chapter, oops. Will fix later!

o.o.o

"Prompto," Luna says as she gets into the back of the transport, "let me know when we reach a gas station. We're going to need a map."

The one with silver hair told them how far to drive to reach a road, and then which direction to go once they're on the road. They drive until they approach a structure that might be a station, and Prompto makes 3179 stop the transport. He gets out and opens the back. "Luna," he asks, "is that a 'gas station'?"

Luna gets up and looks, and she says it is. They drive a little farther until they reach the station, and Luna gets out. "I won't be long. Oh, thank goodness I didn't keep all my money together...." She pulls something out of her boot. She lets 3288 go with her after she ties a ribbon over his barcode, but the rest of the MTs stay and wait. Prompto looks at all the colorful signs. He watches people plugging nozzles into vehicles, and he realizes that a 'gas station' must be a place where people refuel in addition to a place where people obtain maps.

Luna comes out of the building again and opens the cab of the transport. "A map," she says happily, and unfolds it. It's very big. Prompto helps hold one end of it. "Now, let's see, where are we...?"

Once they know where to go, they drive for a long time. Prompto eventually falls asleep. When he wakes up, the sun is setting and he hears 3179 and Brave murmuring to each other. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"We don't have enough fuel left to reach Insomnia," 3179 says.

Prompto considers this. "Go as far as we can. Maybe there will be another gas station soon."

After a while, they pass a sign that says 'Welcome to Hammerhead.' One of the buildings right by the side of the road has equipment in the front that looks like the refueling equipment at the last gas station, so they stop the transport.

Prompto goes to fetch Luna, but when he opens the back of the transport, Luna is asleep again, and more level ones have blue eyes instead of red. "Luna's tired," he says. Getting rid of daemon blood makes her tired.

He closes the doors again without waking her up. He goes to look at the refueling equipment, hoping it will have instructions for the procedure. It doesn't, but it does have a notice that says _'For assistance, please ask inside.'_

There is no way to get inside the refueling equipment, and it looks like a very uncomfortable place for a person to be inside, anyway. Prompto turns around and looks to see if there are other people at the gas station. Maybe one of them will require assistance, and he can see who they ask.

There is currently no one else refueling, but a person walks out of the small building nearby and crosses the road. Maybe there's someone inside the building he can ask.

He goes into the building and looks around. There's only one person inside, a woman with curly yellow hair who's moving colorful cans from a box into a humming cupboard. "Hello," he says.

"Be right with ya!" the one with curly hair calls back. She puts the cans she's holding into the cupboard, closes the door, then comes over to him. "What can I do fer--?" She stops and stares. He doesn't know why until he turns around.

He didn't realize that his brothers followed him again. Brave is holding Sunshine's hand, and 3179 is standing behind them. Sunshine mostly looks like a human, but his barcode is exposed. Brave and 3179 still have red eyes. They're not holding any weapons, but their holstered guns are clearly visible.

The one with curly hair swallows. "What's all this now?" she says quietly.

"The instructions said 'For assistance, please ask inside.' We need assistance to refuel our vehicle."

The one with curly hair looks outside where the transport is. "Looks like a military vehicle."

"We're civilians," he says.

"Those guns sure don't look civilian."

"We were soldiers, but we're not anymore."

"...Y'all deserters?"

3179 gasps, and Brave flinches like somebody whipped him. "No, sir," 3179 chokes out. "No, sir, no, sir, no sir...!"

"I didn't! I didn't!" Brave whimpers. Both of them are shaking and gasping, like they can't breathe.

Prompto is shaking a little, too. He remembers being taught the punishments for traitors and deserters. The level twos didn't even know who or what they fought for, but they knew what would happen if they didn't fight. "It's okay," he gasps. He can't seem to get enough air into his lungs. "We're not...at the facility anymore...we're not soldiers anymore...only soldiers can be deserters, but we're not soldiers...!"

Sunshine is crying again. Prompto named him for his smile as beautiful as sunshine, but he only seems to be making Sunshine cry lately, over and over again. He's doing a poor job of being a big brother.

"All right, now, y'all, all right," the one with curly hair says cautiously. "You, big fella, tell me five things ya can see."

"I s-see...I see th-the floor," 3179 says, "and...3234's boots...and I see 3300...."

The one with curly hair makes them tell her things they can see and hear and touch and smell until they calm down. 3179 and Brave bow their heads, waiting to be corrected. Sunshine clutches Prompto's leg and stares. His eyes are wet.

"Thing is," the one with curly hair says quietly, "I ain't gonna be party to Lucians gettin' hurt. But if y'all're really serious 'bout bein' refugees 'steada invaders, ya can start by handin' over yer weapons and lettin' me take a look-see at that cargo a' yourn."

"My brothers are the cargo," he explains. "And maybe Luna."

"Luna?"

"Yes." He tries to remember Luna's other names. "Lunafreya Nox Fleuret."

"Say _what_ now?!"

"She...she said to call her 'Luna'...."

"Yer tellin' me ya got the gosh-diddly _Oracle_ in there?!"

"Yes. Luna is the Oracle." He still doesn't really know what an Oracle is.

The one with curly hair marches over to the transport. When she opens the back doors, she goes very still and tense as most of the MTs turn to look at her. Nothing happens for about one minute, except that Umbra barks. Then the one with curly hair draws in a long breath and slowly lets it out. "PARDON ME, MA'AM!" she bellows, so loudly that some of the MTs flinch and Pryna barks three times. "Ma'am! MA'AM!"

Luna makes a noise and curls up, her head still resting on an MT's thigh.

The one with curly hair takes another one of those deep, slow breaths. Then she climbs into the transport and starts carefully moving past MTs. "Pardon me...pardon...jes' gonna scoot on by ya, don't mind me...." She leans over to shake Luna's shoulder. "Ma'am?"

Luna shifts again, then abruptly sits up. "Oh! Hello."

"Howdy, ma'am. Name's Cindy Aurum. I was wonderin' if you could clear up a thing or two fer me."

Luna explains. As she talks, Prompto realizes that he was probably supposed to keep it a secret that he and his brothers are MT units even though they're in Lucis now. The one with curly hair listens, and she looks at 3288 sitting on Luna's lap. "That's a mighty wild story," she finally says. "Ya say Prompto there's friends with the crown prince?"

"Indeed. He speaks very warmly of Noctis, and Noctis also speaks highly of him in his letters."

The one with curly hair scratches her head. "I'll be. Well, if yer sure there's no danger, I'd be happy to help ya out. I'd get Paw-paw, he has connections with them fancy city folk, but he won't be back fer another few days. No phone reception that deep in the wilds, either."

"Oh, there's no need to trouble anyone, all we ask for is your discretion," Luna says. She hesitates. "Actually, I'm...not entirely sure why we've stopped here."

"We're low on fuel," Prompto explains. "There's not enough to make it to Insomnia."

"Oh dear."

"No need for worry, m'lady, we got what this ol' girl needs," the one with curly hair says, slapping a hand against the wall of the transport.

"I've no doubt, but payment might be an issue...I'm afraid we're quite low on funds...."

It turns out that money is required to exchange for fuel, but Luna doesn't have enough money equal to the worth of the fuel. The one with curly hair says that they can work for it. "Ya gotta lotta strong men here, we'll find something for 'em to do. Won't take 'em long to work off the cost a' fuel and a night's stay."

"Oh, we couldn't possibly intrude on your hospitality!"

"Now, listen here, m'lady, sun's gone down and ya don't wanna be on the road if ya can help it, even with them daemon-repelling lights! 'Specially with all these little 'uns. The city'll keep, and in the meantime, y'all get a night's rest somewhere better'n this big van a' yourn."

The one with curly hair gives a lot of instructions. She shows Luna, Prompto, and the MTs following them all the rooms in her house and where things are, then she tells Luna and three level twos to take care of the level ones and start giving them baths. She takes a lot of MTs away to something called 'caravans,' and when she comes back, she has a lot of bags of food with her. When she finds out that Prompto knows how to cook, she instructs him to make dinner for everyone, which he does with the help of the brothers who always follow him (except Sunshine, who is currently being bathed). She takes the level fours and some threes and twos with her to somewhere called a 'garage.'

She's still gone when the first batch of soup is ready. Prompto instructs Brave and 3179 to start putting the soup into bowls and cups, then he starts looking for brothers to feed.

Every time he passes a brother, he tells them to go to the kitchen to get their soup, then he comes to the bathroom and finds Luna and 3232 very wet as they scrub three level ones with soap and shampoo. 3229 and 3238 are struggling to dry off two level ones with towels, and other level ones, some with clothes on and some naked, laugh and scream happily as they and Pryna chase each other through the hallway.

Sunshine breaks out of the crowd of level ones and squeals as he latches onto Prompto's leg. He looks up, and his whole face is lit up with a smile like his name. It makes Prompto feel warm to see it. "Hello, Sunshine."

Sunshine makes a noise that sounds like "Eee!"

Prompto looks in rooms until he finds a drawer full of shirts, and he starts putting them on the clean level ones. The shirts are too big, but they cover the level ones so they're not naked and cold anymore. He leads the level ones to the kitchen and gives them all soup to eat, warning them that it's hot.

When the next batch of soup is ready, he makes sure that it's divided into containers with lids. He finds a bag to put all the containers in, then he goes to look for 'caravans.' He sees a brother standing outside some structures that look like tiny houses inside. He distributes the soup. He has to go back for another batch of soup and reuse some of the containers, but eventually, all the brothers in the caravans get fed.

Again, he goes back for more soup. Umbra watches him intently, and he wonders if Umbra is hungry. "Are you hungry, Umbra?" Umbra can't talk, but he keeps staring, so Prompto leaves some soup at the bottom and sets the pot on the floor. Umbra immediately puts his head into the pot and starts licking at the soup, and Prompto goes to look for his other brothers. They're in a very large room filled with vehicles and parts of vehicles and many tools.

Two of the level fours are bare of their armor. Thick black fluid is leaking from the injection sites where their armor had fed various substances into their veins. A level two is kneeling next to them, bandaging the injection sites. The one with curly hair is crouched on the other side, trying to attach cables from a wall outlet to the fours' charging ports. The other fours are lying on platforms as level threes and level twos work with tools to detach their armor.

He forgot the one with curly hair's name. "Excuse me," he says.

She looks up. "Oh! Hey there, darlin'."

"I have soup for my brothers."

The one with curly hair blinks, then looks at a clock on the wall, then whistles. "Woowee, I didn't even notice the time passin'! Y'all go on and git, I can finish up here."

All the MTs stare at her. Then they look at him, but...he doesn't know what she said. "What does 'go on and git' mean?" he asks.

She laughs. "I mean everyone's worked hard and are probably hungry. Show 'em where to eat, I can finish gettin' the rest of this armor off on my own."

He looks at the level fours, who are all staring straight ahead of them with no emotion on their faces. He looks at the ones who have been freed of their armor. They look pale and bruised and weak, but now they can feel the sun and wind on their skin, and they can feel the softness when they lie down on beds and feel pressure when they're hugged.

He looks at the younger MTs, who are still standing close to the level fours and gripping tools in their hands like they don't want to go. "Do you want to leave and eat soup?" he asks them. "Or do you want to stay until all the armor's off?"

They look at the one with curly hair, and someone finally asks, "What are our orders?"

"Oh, sweetheart," the one with curly hair says. Her voice sounds very gentle. "If ya wanna eat, go on and eat. If ya wanna stay 'til all yer brothers are free, do what feels right."

They shift nervously. Prompto finally sets down the bag of soup containers and walks over to the closest platform. "Show me how to remove this gauntlet."

They work until all the level fours are free, and the one with curly hair finishes plugging them all in. "I'll be right back out in two shakes," she promises them. She goes over to a black box on a table that's playing some kind of music and turns the volume up. It's loud now: wailing, swooping voices and twanging instruments. He's never heard music like that before.

"Can you play songs by Argentum?" he asks.

The one with curly hair looks at him in surprise. "What's that, now?"

"Argentum was a composer who died a long time ago. He wrote very beautiful music."

"Hmm, I dunno 'bout Argentum specifically, but lemme jes'...." She turns another knob and the sounds flick rapidly: snatches of music, static, and talking voices. Eventually she stops turning the knob, and real music is playing now, the kind that Ignis gave him. "Howzat?"

He smiles. "Thank you."

TBC

A/N: Good news: in addition to this chapter and half of the next that I wrote on Tuesday, things have been so slow at work lately that I wrote an additional chapter and a half. Yay progress!


	11. Part 10

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 10 (rough draft)**

A/N: My life has been a _complete mess_ for the past couple of days, so you guys get a new Promised Land chapter, because why not. :)

o.o.o

They leave the level fours in the garage with the music and go back to the house. Inside, level twos and threes are standing around uncertainly, some of them holding level ones. In the noisiest room, Sunshine is crying in Brave's arms, Pryna is barking, and Luna and some level twos are trying to put blankets on a group of level ones. Luna looks very messy. Her hair is in tendrils around her face and her expression looks like she might start crying or shouting soon, he's not sure which.

"Aw, darlin', I've got it from here," the one with curly hair says soothingly. "Go on to bed."

"Sweet _stars_ , there are so many of them...!" Luna goes away with 3288 and the dogs, and the one with curly hair finds places for all the level ones to sleep. Prompto makes sure that the MTs from the garage eat their soup. The one with curly hair finds more places for level twos to sleep, then she teaches the level threes and Prompto how to 'tidy up.' Then she finds places for the threes to sleep.

At last, the house is dark and quiet. The one with curly hair looks tired. "Come on, darlin'," she murmurs to him, "help me pitch the tent." He and 3179 help the one with curly hair erect a flimsy structure in the back yard as Brave sits on the ground and holds Sunshine. They go to the garage and unplug the level fours from the wall. The one with curly hair leads the fours to the 'tent' and gives them blankets. She instructs them to 'stay put' until someone comes to get them in the morning.

She puts her hands on her hips and smiles at Prompto. "I'm bushed. Come on in and let's see if we can find a place fer y'all to hole up fer the night."

There are already MTs and Luna in all the beds and the couch and a lot of the floor. There aren't anymore blankets or towels. The one with curly hair piles clothes on the floor, tells him and his brothers to lie down, then covers them with more clothes. "Sorry I can't do more for ya," she says. "I'll be back bright an' early tomorrow morning. Y'all treat my house gentle, now!" She leaves, stepping carefully over MTs.

Sunshine is already asleep in Prompto's arms, and 3179's back is pressed to his. Brave lies facing him, his eyes glowing in the dark. "Prompto?" he whispers.

"Yes?"

"I'm...I'm scared. That this isn't real."

"It's real," he says. "I'm your brother and I love you. We left the facility, and we're never going back. We're going to Insomnia, and Cor will take care of us."

"All these humans...Luna and those people in her facility, and the humans on the airship, and this human...they don't correct us or get angry. They don't even give many orders!"

"Humans in Lucis are much more pleasant than the ones at the facility. They treat us like people." Brave cries softly, and Prompto pets his hair until they both fall asleep.

o.o.o

He wakes up, his heart beating hard in his chest. He thinks someone screamed. The person screams again. It's a level one. Somewhere in the dark, someone with glowing eyes sits up. The level one cries quietly. He thinks the older MT might be holding the level one. Another someone stands up and makes his way over to Prompto. It's a level three. "3234," he reports, "some of the level ones have been malfunctioning."

Eyes glow in the dark as several twos and threes sit up and look at them. 3179 sits up, too.

"How have they been malfunctioning?" he asks.

"They sometimes wake up at inappropriate times and scream, cry, shake, or exhibit irregular breathing. The behavior eventually subsides, but it happens again every time they sleep."

He gets up and steps carefully over to where the level one is crying. 3179 and the level three who made the report follow after him. He kneels down. "Hello," he says.

The MT who's holding the crying one looks at him. It's too dark for Prompto to see his barcode. "How much do the modifications for this type of malfunction hurt?" he asks quietly.

"I don't think it's a malfunction," Prompto says. "Level one, what's your number?"

"Th-three two nine nine," the one sobs.

"Why are you crying, 3299?"

"D...Don't hurt me...."

It feels like something in his chest twists. No one has ever begged him not to hurt them before. He doesn't want to hurt anybody. It makes him sick to think that a person he cares about so much and wants to protect would think he would hurt them. "I won't hurt you. I think I know why you're crying, but I want to be sure. Please tell me."

"I...I was...back at...the bad place...and...they put me inside...and shut it...and it was dark! And I couldn't move! And I couldn't get out!" He cries harder for a while. "And...it's still dark...but it's not the bad place...?"

"Does anyone have a light?" Prompto asks. After some fumbling, someone turns on a lamp. 3299 goes quiet and stares at the many brothers all around him, and the one with curly hair's warm, messy house. He clutches the level two harder. "3299," Prompto says, "you had a bad dream. It's called a nightmare. That happens when we start losing daemon blood. It's very unpleasant, but it's not a malfunction. It's normal. You have to work through all the crap, but eventually it goes away and you start to have some dreams that are pleasant."

"What is 'crap'?" someone asks.

"What are 'dreams'?" someone else asks.

"I think crap is feces. Dreams are...complicated." He tries to explain dreams. A lot of MTs look like they don't believe him. By the end of his explanation, 3299 has fallen asleep again.

3228, the level two who is holding him, says, "He's not malfunctioning?"

"No. If he screams again, hug him like you're doing now and tell him it was only a dream. Warm milk is good, too."

"What is 'milk'?"

Everyone eventually goes back to sleep. A few hours later, Prompto wakes up again, but this time the shouting is cheerful and the one who's being so noisy is the one with curly hair. "Up and at 'em, kiddos! Got a busy day ahead a' us!"

She has more bags full of ingredients and another bag filled with sunglasses with tags on them. She tells a level three to go take the first shower and explains to everyone else how to tidy up. While the others are working on that, she gives Prompto and Brave a recipe for something called 'flapjacks' to work on and teaches 3179 and another level three how to wash and dry dishes. Then she goes to fetch the level fours and the MTs in the caravans.

After breakfast, she gathers everyone in the garage. "All right, now, y'all listen up. I'mma send a buncha y'all out on some hunts; M'lady Oracle, if ya don't mind, I'm thinkin' you could take summa the threes, a four or two, and the dogs. The rest a' y'all'll be workin' in town, so yer gonna need ta cover up a bit or people'll be guessin' right 'bout where all these red-eyed blondies sidled up from. I got some hats, and everyone who doesn't get one'll hafta wear a hood or find some other way ta hide yer hair. I got sunglasses, but they're only borrowed from the store, so don't take the tags off!"

Luna gets dressed in sturdy clothes, takes the stack of papers the one with curly hair gives her, and leaves with Pryna and Umbra, a large group of threes, and two fours. The one with curly hair starts assigning tasks to everyone and showing them what to do. Three older MTs are instructed to watch the level ones and make sure they don't hurt anyone or themselves or damage anything. Others work on cleaning the house and the garage, and six are chosen to help work on the cars. Prompto and his closest brothers are assigned to make more soup. Lunch is hours away, but there are so many people to feed that it takes a lot of time to make enough soup.

Sunshine is too little to help and he keeps getting in the way and distracting them, so Prompto tells Brave to play with Sunshine.

"What does 'play' mean?"

He tries to think how to explain it. "It means to do pleasant activities for the purpose of experiencing enjoyment."

Brave stares at him. He doesn't understand.

Prompto doesn't know how else to explain it, but he's noticed that the level ones seem to be good at playing even though nobody taught them how. "Watch the level ones, they know how to play. Ask Sunshine, too, since he's a level one."

"Yes, Prompto."

o.o.o

The 'hunters' come back around noon. When 3288 sees them coming, he runs fast, shouting, "LUNAAAAA!"

Luna was smiling as she talked to one of the level threes, but now her eyes widen and she stops and holds out her hands as if to hold something back. "Darling, wait, I'm filthy--!"

3288 ignores her and throws his arms around her legs, holding tight. Luna lowers her hands and smiles. She scoops up 3288 and puts lots of noisy kisses all over him as he giggles loudly. Then she spins around, and he laughs so loud it sounds like screaming.

She stops and looks at Prompto as he approaches. He's never seen her with such a big smile before. Her hair is untidy and her clothes are stained and she's covered with dirt and the dried blood of whatever she killed, but she looks...beautiful. She looks beautiful. "Prompto," she says, "I have decided: I will keep this little one when we get to Insomnia. His name is Starlight Argentum Fleuret."

"My name is Starlight Argentum Fleuret," Starlight tells Prompto, beaming.

"I'm glad you have a name," Prompto tells him. Sunshine is hugging his legs tightly, and he picks up the level one so he can walk without tripping. Sunshine and Starlight smile at each other.

"Yoo hoo!" the one with curly hair calls behind him, and he turns around. Pryna and Umbra are wrestling in the middle of a crowd of level ones.

"Go on to the diner and collect yer pay," the one with curly hair says, "then grab showers in the caravans and come get lunch."

The money from the hunts and from cleaning and from working on the vehicles is enough to pay for fuel and for all the food and water the MTs used. In the afternoon, Prompto and Luna start collecting MTs and counting them as they climb into the transport.

A level two and a level three are missing. Prompto finds them both in the garage, working on a car with its hood open. "It's time to go," he says.

3236 and 3171 look at each other. Then they straighten up and hold hands. "3175 was permitted to stay behind," 3236 says. "Maybe more MT units will be allowed to stay at this facility."

It takes a moment for him to realize what 3236 is saying. When he does, he wants to cry.

He goes to find Luna. "3236 and 3171 don't want to come," he says. Then he really does cry.

"Ohhh," Luna says softly, and puts a hand on his shoulder.

The one with curly hair comes over. "What happened, darlin'?" she asks gently, putting a hand on his back.

"3236 and 3171 don't want to come! And 3175 didn't want to come! I'm losing brothers! I love them and it hurts!"

"Oh, sugar...."

"One of our number elected to stay with the mercenary who conveyed us to Lucis," Luna explains. "I'm afraid we've another two who were overly charmed by your hospitality and wish to continue taking advantage of it."

The one with curly hair looks at 3236 and 3171, who are standing at the threshold of the garage, close together to hide their still-clasped hands. She walks over to them, and he and Luna follow. "Ya like it here that much, huh," the one with curly hair says.

"You said-- you said w-we did a good job, so...so we can continue our performance, and...be useful. We can be useful," 3236 says anxiously.

"Darlings," Luna says, "we've intruded on Miss Cindy long enough. If you stayed here in Hammerhead, we would have to find someone kind who would be willing and able to care for you, and considering your country of origin, that might be rather difficult."

"Come to think a' it," the one with curly hair says, "we could use a hand or two 'round the shop and garage. We can start with a trial basis, maybe a few weeks to see how things work out. I'll hafta see what Paw-paw says when he gets back, but he ain't gonna turn 'em out on the street."

"Well," Luna says slowly, "I suppose if none of you have any objection...."

His heart sinks. 3236 and 3171 really aren't coming. "Insomnia is good," he tells them, hoping they'll change their minds.

"Here is good," 3236 whispers. 3171 hasn't said anything, but he hasn't let go of 3236's hand, and he looks very intently at Prompto as if asking with his eyes.

He hugs them tight. He hopes he doesn't lose anymore brothers before they get to Cor.

TBC

A/N: I think the way I wrote the level ones' dialogue is inconsistent. I'll try to fix it in a later draft!


	12. Part 11

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 11 (rough draft)**

A/N: The bad news is that most of the upcoming chapters will be a little shorter than usual. The good news is that the main story is DONE, baby! 8D Drafted, typed, and choreography mistakes fixed; each chapter just needs a quick-edit before posting. *victory dance*

o.o.o

They can see the city in the distance. He talks about Cor and his friends for a while, and tries to answer Brave's questions.

Then he happens to look out the window on the side. He sees people in the fields, fighting some wild animals. He sees familiar flashes of blue. "Stop!" he shouts. 3179 veers off the road and comes to a hard stop. Prompto throws open the door and runs as fast as he can.

There are three people. The closer he gets, the more sure he is that they are who he thought they were.

They're fighting, so he doesn't want them to be distracted when he says hello and hugs them. When he's close enough, he draws his gun and shoots the attacking animals until there are no more left.

As soon as the last one drops, Noctis's sword disappears and he whirls around. "Prompto?!"

"Noctis!"

"PROMPTO!"

"Noct, wait--" Ignis shouts, but Noctis doesn't wait.

They crash into each other so hard it hurts a little, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care when they fall over, either. There's more shouting, and Sunshine's crying somewhere, but he can't move. He's holding _Noctis_. "Prompto, I can't breathe," Noctis laughs.

He can't breathe properly, either, because of how tight Noctis is hugging him. "I love you so much," he says into Noctis's clavicle, "and I missed you so much I can't think of enough words to describe _how much_ I missed you."

"Same," Noctis whispers. Then he shifts. "Whoa."

He pushes Prompto until he lets go, and they both sit up. Ignis and Gladio are on either side of them, so tense they look angry, their hands uncertainly on their weapons. Sunshine is running toward them, crying, and 3179 is coming, too, his weapon drawn. "Orders, sir!" 3179 shouts.

"Put the gun away!" he shouts back, and stands up in time to catch Sunshine.

"Prompto...Prompto...!" Sunshine sobs.

"I'm sorry, Sunshine. I was too excited to wait for you."

"Why do you have a kid?!" Noctis exclaims. He tilts his head. "And...what are you wearing? Are those girls' clothes?"

"Yes." They're Luna's clothes, and she is female. He's wearing the black shirt with stars and the pale blue pants again because he had to give the one with curly hair's clothes back.

3179 reaches them and halts. He obeyed and put his gun away, but now he's holding knives ready. Ignis is holding knives ready, too. "3179, put all your weapons away. These are my friends and I love them."

3179 sheathes his weapons and stands at attention.

"Prompto," Ignis says, "wonderful as it is to see you again, some explanations are in order."

As they walk back to the transport, he tells them about his brothers that he loves so much. "There are 50, but 3175 stayed behind with the one with silver hair and 3171 and 3236 stayed with the one with curly hair, so now there are only 47 coming to Insomnia."

" _Only_ 47," Gladio snorts. "Dad's going to _really love_ this." Prompto is glad that the one from the phone will be pleased.

"And this young man?" Ignis says, eyeing 3179.

"My orders are to protect the cargo," 3179 says.

"Forget that; Prompto, _why do you have a kid_?" Noctis asks.

"Sunshine is very small and pleasant to hold, and I love him very much."

"That's not what I asked!"

He tries to think about what Noctis asked. "I have eighteen level ones because they were in the facility when we left and it-- it would have felt bad to leave them behind."

"Eight-- _Eighteen_?! What?!"

They're nearing the transport now. Brave is standing by the open cab door, looking frightened, and he drops to his knees. His breathing is irregular.

He gives Sunshine to 3179 and kneels down by Brave and puts an arm around his shoulders. "It's okay, Brave. You're safe. No one will hurt you."

Brave is still gasping. He remembers what the one with curly hair said when he and Brave and 3179 were panicking in the store. "Tell me five things you can see."

"I s-see...I see gr-green, the...the plants...."

When Brave is finally breathing properly again, he looks up. Noctis gasps a little. "Holy shit, Prompto, he's _you_!"

"Language, Noct," Ignis says, looking at Sunshine.

He frowns. "No. I'm me. He's Brave."

"I mean, you guys look _exactly_ alike!"

"Yes. We're clones."

"I just-- Wow." Noctis suddenly looks at the transport. "Wait, does that mean _all 50_ of them look like you?!"

"Yes."

Noctis darts toward the back of the transport. Ignis and Gladio try to stop him, but he warps out of their reach and throws open the back doors. Then he freezes. "Holy... _shit_ ," he whispers. Ignis and Gladio halt beside him and stare, too. After a moment, Gladio grips his shoulder and pulls Noctis behind him.

Prompto reaches the doors just as Pryna and Umbra come bounding out. Pryna licks his hands, then steps away to sniff at the grass and then urinate. Umbra rears up to put his paws on Noctis's chest and lick his chin. "Umbra!" Noctis shouts. "And Pryna?! What-- _Luna_?!"

Luna sits up and stretches. She rubs her eyes. "Are we there yet?" she mumbles.

"Luna!" Noctis shouts again.

Luna whips her head around and her eyes widen. "Noctis?!"

"Luna!"

Luna starts climbing over MTs' legs and Noctis struggles to get free of Gladio. Luna reaches him and they hug. "Oh, Noctis, it is so good to see you!"

"Luna! You're here! I can't believe it!"

For a while, Noctis and Luna talk to each other happily and Ignis and Gladio whisper to each other urgently and Prompto pets Sunshine to soothe him and explains to Brave and all the other nervous MTs that Noctis and Ignis and Gladio are his friends, and what friends are, and that they're safe.

Finally, Gladio claps his hands to get everyone's attention. "Okay, listen up. Ignis is gonna stay with you all and drive you to the city. We gotta pack up our camp, but that won't take long, and I'll drive the royals back in our car."

"Wait, Prompto's coming with us, right?" Noctis says.

"Sure." Gladio turns to him. "You okay leaving the tyke with the others?"

"What does 'tyke' mean?"

"I mean the kid," Gladio explains, gesturing at Sunshine.

He feels...apprehensive. "Sunshine and Brave and 3179 like to be close to me. They feel bad if they can't come."

"Kid, the car only seats five, we don't have a car seat for the baby, and we can't risk putting unvetted MTs in the same car as the prince."

"Gladio!" Noctis says. He sounds angry.

"I can vouch for them," Luna says. "All of them. I have traveled with them for quite some distance, much of it alone except for my dogs, and every single one of them has treated me with nothing but gentleness and respect."

"Nevertheless," Ignis says, "we are tasked with the protection of the royal family and do not have the authority to make decisions that unnecessarily risk their safety. The prince's travel to the city is not negotiable. Although we as Lucians have no authority over a Tenebraean citizen, I beg you to consider what a blow it would be if the Oracle were to be harmed on our watch."

Luna presses her lips together, looking displeased. "I may have spent much of my life restricted, but I am not helpless, and my judgment is sound."

They argue for a while. Noctis wants to ride in the same vehicle as both Prompto and Luna, but Ignis and Gladio won't let him in the same vehicle with any MTs other than Prompto and maybe Sunshine, but Prompto feels too bad about leaving his brothers behind. Luna is angry at Ignis and Gladio and wants to ride with the MTs, but relents when Noctis is unhappy.

At last, they all decide that Noctis and Luna will go with Gladio. Noctis looks frustrated and says it sucks, but he hits Prompto on the arm in his friendly way. "Guess I'll see you in town, Prompto."

"Yes. I love you."

Noctis smiles and turns to walk away with Luna and Gladio.

It's quiet now. Ignis looks at him, then inside the transport where older MTs are trying to keep the level ones quiet and still, but they're not having much success. Umbra went with Luna, but Pryna stayed with the transport and is licking tears off a level one's face. "Was it a difficult journey?" Ignis asks.

"No." He thinks about it. "Maybe. But it didn't seem difficult. It feels very good that my brothers and I are not at the facility anymore."

Ignis smiles. "There will probably be difficult times ahead for you all, Prompto, but I do think you did quite well to bring them with you. I'm proud of you."

He feels himself smiling. "Thank you."

Ignis looks at the MTs again. "How were you planning to get into the city with a transport full of former Niflheim soldiers?"

He's not sure why Ignis is asking. It seems like too simple a question for him to not know the answer. "We were going to drive the transport," he says. He wonders if Ignis wants to get into the city without driving.

Ignis smiles a little. "Well, it was quite fortunate that Noctis, Gladio, and I happened to be field training this week."

There's not enough room for all of them in the cab, so Ignis makes 3179 and 3104 go into the back. He looks at Brave for a long time. Brave clings tight to Prompto's shirt and trembles. Ignis finally says that Brave can stay in the front if he covers his eyes and hair with sunglasses and a hat. Ignis doesn't let Sunshine stay, though. "I'm afraid it's not safe for children that small to ride in the front."

Sunshine cries, but Ignis doesn't change his mind. 3179 holds Sunshine, and two other level ones come and pat Sunshine's head and hold his hand. Other level ones and a two are comforting Starlight because he's crying, too.

Ignis and Prompto and Brave get into the cab. A black car emerges from a gravel side road, stops briefly at the main road, and honks. Ignis puts the turn signal on and the transport starts moving.

"I feel excited to see Cor," he says.

"Oh - Prompto, I'm afraid that Marshal Leonis is not in the city at the moment. He left to search for you in Niflheim, and while he has been informed of your return, it could take him up to a week to make his way back."

"Oh." His heart sinks. He misses Cor so much it hurts.

"Believe me, Prompto, he is just as eager to be reunited as you are. He will certainly travel with utmost haste."

"Yes."

It doesn't take very long to get to the Wall. The black car only has to stop for a moment so the barrier can be raised for it to pass, but the transport stops longer.

A person in a uniform peers into the cab and frowns at Prompto.

Ignis shows the man something. "Ignis Scientia, Hand of the prince. I'm escorting a group of refugees; the king's Shield has already been informed."

"Refugees, eh," the guard says. Something about his expression makes Prompto's stomach twist.

"Yes," Ignis says sharply. "They are very brave people who escaped a horrific situation and seek sanctuary with we who are more fortunate. Do what you need to do to send us on our way quickly, we have children aboard."

The guard looks displeased, but he steps back and talks to someone on a comm. The barrier finally opens and Ignis drives the transport through.

TBC

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reviewing! Your comments keep me going. ^^

Several people have been commenting on the female characters in this fic, particularly Cindy, and I realized I neglected to credit CreamofTomatoSoup for the absolutely amazing way they characterize all the canon female characters in their fic _and the nettles were quiet_. Nettles is up there with PWS at the top of my list of favorite FF15 fics, I definitely rec it in general, and, again, credit to Tomato for influencing how I wrote the ladies here in my own fic! I love that Nettles-Prom has so many strong sisters who love and nurture him.

All right, so! Things have been so slow at work that I hand-wrote the entire rest of the main story, Gladio's story in this AU (though I still need to come up with an ending), and made a good start on Cor's story. It took me a while to get the main story typed, but I finally did it! You'll notice there's a set chapter count now. ^^ (One "chapter" will be a short epilogue and one will be a character list, but still.) Updates will be at least once per week.


	13. Part 12

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 12 (rough draft)**

**A/N: Arcis & Lacertus are lithos_saeculum's OCs.**

(The one with the brown hair is Monica.)

o.o.o

They finally stop in a courtyard by the Citadel. The black car is already there. Noctis, Luna, and Gladio have already gotten out of it and are talking to the one from the phone. There are four Crownsguard gathered nearby.

"Ignis," the one from the phone says when Ignis gets out. He nods at Prompto. "Prompto. It's good to have you back with us."

"Yes. I miss Cor."

Brave hesitantly gets out of the cab and shuffles behind Prompto. The one from the phone stares at him. "Take off your sunglasses," he says.

Brave stiffens. He looks at Ignis, who nods, then he grips the back of Prompto's shirt with one hand and takes off his sunglasses with the other. The Crownsguard all straighten up.

"...Ah," the one from the phone says. He frowns at Ignis. "I see you conveniently neglected to specify that one of the refugees is an MT."

Noctis snorts, and Gladio gives a short, sharp laugh.

"Perhaps we'll do a better job this time round than we did last time," Ignis says, stepping closer to Prompto and Brave while maintaining steady eye contact with the one from the phone.

"Hey, Prompto," Noctis calls. He sounds like he's trying not to laugh. "Why don't you go let all the kids out of the back." Gladio is grinning, and Luna covers her mouth with one hand.

Prompto and Ignis go to the back of the transport, and Gladio comes after them. When the doors are opened, the MTs blink in the light. "We're here," Prompto tells them. He feels himself smiling wide. Sunshine scrambles toward him and jumps, and Prompto catches him and holds him. Holding level ones feels very pleasant.

"Come on out," Ignis says. "Orderly now, two at a time."

Prompto steps back to make room, and 3179 quickly joins him. Starlight peers around the transport. "LUNA!" he shrieks, and runs to her.

She smiles wide and strides forward to meet him, sweeping him into her arms and putting a kiss on his face. "Hello, darling!" Umbra licks his leg, and he giggles.

More and more MTs come out of the vehicle. The Crownsguard start to exclaim and hold their weapons uncertainly. The one from the phone's eyes widen and he starts speaking rapidly into a comm.

The twos and threes hesitantly drift together, then suddenly start organizing themselves in numerically-ordered rows. The level ones look frightened and confused and keep clinging to their favorite brothers instead of letting themselves be organized. "It's all right, " Ignis says. "There's no need for that, simply remain calm until we've determined the best way to proceed."

More Crownsguard start hurrying into the courtyard from all directions. "Okay, hold on, wait, Dad," Gladio says. Noctis and Luna start shouting and hurry to get between the MTs and the Crownsguard, and Ignis calls after Noctis.

A hand grabs his shoulder, and he turns around. Arcis and Lacertus are standing there. This is about the time Lacertus leaves and Arcis comes to replace him. They both stare at him very intently for a minute. "This one's Prompto," Arcis says.

He smiles. "Arcis."

"Prompto!" they both yell at the same time. Arcis hugs him and Lacertus slaps his back.

"I said STOP!" Noctis shouts. Prompto turns back quickly to look. There are a lot of Crownsguard now - enough to surround the MTs. A lot of them are holding swords. The one from the phone is standing on the stairs, holding out his arm. Gladio has a shield and is facing the MTs, gripping Noctis's arm; Noctis's other arm is outstretched and he's facing the Crownsguard. Luna and the dogs are pulling level ones close, and Ignis is on the opposite side from Noctis and Gladio, facing the Crownsguard there.

The level fours are spread out in a perimeter around their younger brothers, guns out and ready to fire. "Acting commander," 3104 calls, and suddenly it's quiet. Prompto is surprised. The fours almost never speak. "Orders regarding enemy soldiers?" the four asks.

"What enemy soldiers?"

There's a pause. "Orders are to protect the cargo. Enemy soldiers not yet engaged. Threat to cargo unclear."

Suddenly he understands: the MTs are from Niflheim. This is Lucis, and the Crownsguard are Lucian soldiers. The younger MTs don't know about countries yet and they were taught to fight the enemy without knowing who the enemy was. But the fours know about Lucis and Niflheim. Prompto remembers how painful it was when he found out that the enemy loved him and his commanders had 'abused' him. He remembers how difficult it was to understand that he'd been rescued, and that he wasn't bad for becoming Lucian. He knows there's nothing he can say that will make the fours understand.

He gives Sunshine to Brave and moves up to the steps and says as loud as he can, trying to sound like an officer that must be obeyed, "MT units, disarm. Surrender all weapons."

Some of the MTs obey, especially after they look at Luna and she gestures. Not all of them do.

"Acting commander," 3179 says, "prioritization of orders requested."

"There is no conflict of orders. We're home. Cargo is safe."

3179 drops his gun and starts withdrawing his knives and other weapons to add to it. More MTs follow.

The fours don't at first. Then 3104 says, "Executing capture protocol," and turns his gun so that it points at himself. The other fours start to do the same.

"NO!" he screams. "Put your guns down! Surrender! Capture protocol _forbidden_!"

The fours don't move for a minute. Then 3104 drops his gun, and his eyes...go dark, the red light extinguished, so now they're blank and gray.

Prompto feels worried and afraid. He steps forward, then 3104 collapses, and he runs to catch him but he's not going to be fast enough.

Lacertus catches 3104 and lowers him the rest of the way to the ground gently. He feels for a pulse and says, "He's alive."

The one from the phone calls out orders and the Crownsguard start cautiously collecting weapons. A guard tries to pull 3222's gun out of his hands but 3222 keeps clutching it. His face looks angry but the noises he makes are little whimpers. 3221 steps close to him and presses a hand against his back, but he still won't let go.

Arcis moves to the other Crownsguard and says, "I got this." He smiles at 3222. "Hey, kiddo. You've had a pretty exciting week, huh."

"I killed a human because he tried to kill my squadmate!" 3222 suddenly cries, pressing the gun barrel into Arcis's chest. Some of the MTs cover their ears so they can't hear him openly threatening a human.

Some of the Crownsguard draw their weapons again and one of them reaches out, but Arcis puts a hand on his chest to stop him. He's still smiling at 3222. "Well, I'm not going to hurt any of your squadmates," he says. "So looks like there's no problem."

3222 stares at him.

"Give me the gun, kiddo," Arcis murmurs. 3222 doesn't move, but when Arcis tugs, the gun slides out of 3222's hands. 3222 drops to his knees and covers his head, crying. 3221 steps in front of him and stares at Arcis. Arcis smiles and steps back. Then he shoves the gun at another Crownsguard and bows over, clutching his chest and laughing breathlessly, "Holy _shit_...!"

Things are getting more chaotic. The MTs are terrified and Gladio's carrying away Noctis, who's yelling as he struggles. Crownsguard are trying to get Luna away, but she won't leave the level ones, and her trident appears in her hand when they try to pull her. The one from the phone is talking to Ignis, then Ignis moves up the steps and calls out, "If I may have your attention, please!"

Everyone quiets down and looks at him except for the one from the phone, who's murmuring into his comm. "Guests from Niflheim," Ignis says, "we are having some barracks cleared out and prepared to house you. In the meantime, we will start the process of registering you as refugees, so if you would kindly follow me, I will show you where to wait." He descends the stairs and beckons, but the MTs are slow to follow. A lot of them are looking at Prompto.

"Prompto, if you would assist me?" Ignis says. Prompto goes to him. His closest brothers trail after him, Arcis and Lacertus step up on either side of him, and the rest of the MTs follow.

"Prompto," Arcis says, "you have a _story_ to tell."

"About my brothers?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I love them. I'm very relieved we're here." Arcis and Lacertus smile, and Arcis hits his shoulder.

He tells them about his brothers until they reach the auditorium, where Ignis tells the MTs to take a seat anywhere. "We will start processing you in pairs. Your patience is appreciated."

MTs sit and try to make the level ones and some of the twos stop crying for a while. He keeps talking to Arcis and Lacertus while Sunshine buries his face in his chest and Brave buries his face in his shoulder.

A screen at the front of the auditorium lowers. A minute later, a video starts playing. "They're using the refugee orientation video?" Lacertus laughs. "If these kids are anything like Prompto was, they're going to be totally lost."

"Probably just a way to kill time," Arcis says. "How many kids are here? About 50?"

"There are 47 MT units," Prompto says. "3175 stayed with the one with silver hair and 3171 and 3236 stayed with the one with curly hair."

"47, then. That's a lot of kids to process, especially if they're only going two by two."

After a while, people in uniforms come and start passing out objects to the MTs. When one of them comes close and gives an object to him, he realizes it's a covered cup of soup. He's glad - it's been a while since his brothers have eaten. The people give soup to Brave and all the other MTs sitting nearby.

Someone in a different uniform comes to an entryway and calls for Luna, who goes over there with Starlight in her arms and five level ones and a level two trotting after her. None of them come back. In fact, none of the MTs who have been summoned come back, and the auditorium starts to get emptier.

The one from the phone enters and walks up the aisle toward Prompto. He pauses and looks at Lacertus. "Isn't your shift over?"

"I was hoping to help out with all this," Lacertus says, gesturing out at the remaining MTs.

"Hn. Don't forget to fill out overtime paperwork."

"Yes, sir."

"Sir," Arcis asks, "permission to be added to the waiting list?"

The one from the phone frowns. "What waiting list?"

"The list to adopt or foster these kids. I can take a Prompto or two, my family already said it was okay." He holds up his phone.

"I'll take a Prompto, too," Lacertus says. "I've got my own place now, so I have room."

"I can take a baby Prompto," the one with brown hair says. She's sitting in the row of seats in front of them, holding a level one in her lap with a level two and a level three looking at photos on her phone.

"The one from the phone frowns. "I'll keep your offers in mind." He looks at him. "Prompto, I need you to come with me."

He steps aside so Prompto has room to get out of the row of seats. Then he frowns again. "Just you. The others will remain here."

He holds Sunshine a little tighter. "They feel bad when I leave."

"They'll just have to deal with it."

"But...they cry, and it hurts my chest. And sometimes they're helpful."

"We can come along as guards, sir," Arcis offers.

The one from the phone raises an eyebrow. "Are you abetting his insubordination?"

Arcis stiffens and salutes. "No, sir."

He really doesn't want to leave his brothers behind. Sometimes it's necessary or someone asks kindly, but the one from the phone...he doesn't like MT units. He'll make Brave and Sunshine and 3179 stay behind even if they don't have to, and they'll feel bad, and Prompto likes them a lot better than he likes the one from the phone. If he can only choose one party to make happy, he'll choose his brothers.

"My brothers and I are not soldiers anymore," he says. "And you're not our dad. And we're not going to hurt anyone. So...." He can't say it, after all. He wants to defy the one from the phone, but he can't...say it. He can't say, _'So we won't obey you'_ like he meant to.

"So - no." That's a little easier. "No," he says again, louder. His heart is beating a little too quickly, but he doesn't apologize.

The one from the phone glares at him. He looks back. Arcis's and Lacertus's eyes are wide.

Then there's a commotion by the entryway they've been calling MTs from. He is glad to have a reason to hurry away from the one from the phone.

TBC

From an email I sent to Breezy a while back:

Weekend definitely went too fast. X'''D I finished an important RL project, though! :D Rewarding myself by writing more of that MT-Prompto fic (one of my PWS daydreams, what if he got captured and taken back to the facility after all the months of rehabilitation he's been through, then what if he managed to escape again and brought the entire facility's worth of clones back to Insomnia, including the babies and the other teenagers and even the adults farther along in the process [Prom, holding a baby in one arm as a terrified teen who looks exactly like him clings to his other side and a 20-year-old looms behind them, "Dad, I brought back 50 identical brothers even more traumatized than I am! :D" Cor: *jaw drops*]...).

From her reply:

OH MY GOSH SDNFIIGFGE THAT'S A LOT OF KIDS I'm really curious how you end up writing that!! Because to me, rn, it sounds like a joke post hhhhfjdhgjdfhgi POOR COR X''''D Where do they even put them all? Go around the Citadel, "You get a Prompto, you get a Prompto" Well I guess they'd be called MTs, but that's a disliked term so...wow. I laughed a lot, good luck dear!!


	14. Part 13

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 13 (rough draft)**

A/N: Warning for frank use of body part words again.

o.o.o

3221 and 3223 are standing in the entryway. 3222 is shouting at the Crownsguard who are trying to block his way.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"They're taking them away!" 3222 cries. "They're taking them away!"

MTs are being called two at a time. 3221, 3222, and 3223 are always together, and there are three of them. When Luna left, she took seven MTs with her, so it's not a requirement for them to only go two at a time. "3221 and 3222 and 3223 love each other," he tells the humans. "They feel bad if they're separated. I think 3222 will stop shouting if you let him go with his favorite brothers."

The Crownsguard look at the one from the phone, who sighs and nods. They step aside. 3222 runs to his brothers, then stops and covers his face. 3221 and 3223 stand very close to him.

"Come on," the new human says. He starts walking. 3221 touches 3222's back and they start walking, too. He and his own favorite brothers follow them. The one from the phone strides ahead of everyone, talking into his comm.

Lacertus claps his shoulder and murmurs, smiling, "Geez, kid, you really grew some balls while you were gone."

He thinks 'balls' in this context probably means 'testicles.' He hasn't noticed his testicles growing larger, or the emergence of any additional ones. He starts to check, but Arcis says quickly, "Figure of speech! He just means you've gotten really brave, standing up to the Shield like that."

"Oh." He doesn't feel particularly brave. But...he defied the one from the phone, even though he would never have done that before he went back to the facility. He defied the one with silver hair, too, even though he was scared to do it. He will defy humans if it means keeping his brothers safe and happy. Maybe he really is braver now. Rescuing and loving his brothers changed him.

"Yes," he agrees. He wonders if the figure of speech refers to size or quantity and decides to make a guess. "My balls are bigger now." Arcis and Lacertus laugh loudly. He probably guessed wrong, then, but he's glad they're pleased.

They're going toward the place where the one with the white coat lives. Not where she lives; where she works. "I'll be right back," the one from the phone says. He looks at him. "Don't get into trouble." Then the one from the phone goes into a different room down the hall.

There's a table in the hallway with papers and a computer on it, and Luna is there with the MTs she took. A level one is sitting on the table. The human with the computer looks at the MT's wrist and then types something. The human asks Luna questions and types some more. Then a piece of paper emerges from a printer by the computer. "That should do it," she says. "Any others?"

"No, he's the last one," Luna says. She picks up the level one and sets him on his feet, then takes the paper. She smiles at him. "Hello, Prompto. They'll register your brothers here, and then I believe we're to go into that office for exams." She points at the one with the white coat's room.

"Yes," he says. Luna takes Starlight's hand and another level one's hand, and she walks to the room with the other level ones and the two following after her.

"All right, then," the one with the computer says. "Hmm, are we doing groups instead of pairs now?"

"Separation anxiety," Arcis says.

The one with the computer laughs. "All right, well, who's going first?"

He tries to set Sunshine on the table like Luna did, but Sunshine clings to him and won't let go. Arcis pets Sunshine's hair and starts talking to him in a different voice, high and soft like the way Noctis talks to cats. Lacertus nudges 3179 close to the table.

"ID, please," the one with the computer says, and 3179 holds out his wrist with the barcode. The one with the computer types, then says, "Do you have a name yet, sweetie?"

"No, sir."

"That's all right, we can always fill it in later." She asks him some more questions, then prints out a paper and hands it to him.

One by one, the other MTs answer questions and receive papers, and Sunshine finally lets go long enough for the one with the computer to type his barcode. When his paper prints out, Arcis gives it to 3179.

"And you, sweetie?" the one with the computer asks. She's looking at him.

Lacertus laughs. "This is Prompto."

"Oh, _you're_ Prompto! You're the only big one with blue eyes, I should have known."

"Luna made the daemon blood come out of me," he explains. "Now that we don't need to fight anymore, she can do it for all of us instead of just the level ones. But she has to go slow so she won't get too tired."

Now that all the brothers with him have papers, they go into the room where the one with the white coat works. Inside, 3104 is lying on a cot in the corner, his eyes still blank. He's hooked up to some equipment, and one of the machines beeps every time his heart beats.

The one with the white coat and two other people in white coats are each examining an MT. The rest of the MTs who came with Luna are huddling around her, looking frightened, and two Crownsguard are standing by the wall.

3222 freezes when he steps into the room and looks around. He turns and stares at him. "You said we wouldn't be corrected."

"We're not. This room is for tests, not corrections."

"...Tests." 3222 suddenly snatches up a pair of scissors and lunges for his throat. There's a crash as something gets knocked off the table 3222 pins him to, but he doesn't see what it is. One of the people in white coats screams.

Before 3222 can slit his throat, 3179 grabs 3222's head, ready to snap his neck. 3221 and 3223 snatch weapons from the Crownsguard - 3221 holds a sword to 3179's throat, and 3223 raises knives to throw.

"STOP!" Luna shouts. The MTs freeze at the order from a human. The one from the phone rushes into the room and then calls for backup. The Crownsguard already there are reaching for the weapons they still have except for Arcis and Lacertus, who reach out as if to stop the MTs with their hands.

"3222," he says. He lowers his hands to lie by his head, palms up in surrender. It seems like the right thing to do. He can't bring himself to hurt one of his brothers, even to protect himself. "I'm your squadmate, too."

3222 puts down the scissors and starts to cry, his head sinking down to rest on Prompto's chest. He lifts a hand to stroke 3222's hair because he knows that feels comforting when he's crying. 3179 lets go of 3222, and 3221 and 3223 lower their weapons.

"All right, then," the one from the phone says. His voice sounds very pleasant. It's strange. "You four come along to the next room, I need to show you something." Luna pats her hands over him and asks him if he's all right. He says yes, and then she turns to the level ones and tries to make them stop crying.

He realizes that the one from the phone is gently leading 3222 out of the room, and other Crownsguard are escorting 3179, 3221, and 3223 out as well. Brave is sitting on the floor, shaking, his eyes still glowing but somehow looking as blank as 3104's. Sunshine is patting Brave, looking worried, and Arcis is speaking to him gently. Lacertus leans down to whisper in his ear, "Prompto, the Shield...he's not happy. I'm not going to be able to help you."

He hurries after the one from the phone and the MTs he took. They go into a room nearby, and he stops when he sees the other level fours. They usually look straight ahead, but now they're staring intently at each other. Crownsguard are putting something on 3105's and 3111's necks. The other fours are already wearing the things.

They're collars. Like the one he had to wear when he first came to Insomnia.

He stares. Nausea stirs in his stomach. He didn't mind the collar back then, but now, looking at those collars being strapped onto his brothers, he remembers getting shocked a long time ago when Noctis first found out he's an MT. It hurt so much, and it made him sick for days. He remembers the test when he had to press the button that they said would kill him. That hurt so much, too, in a different way, and it...broke something between him and Cor for a while.

The collars hurt. Seeing those collars on his brothers he loves makes him feel sick.

He opens his mouth to say something, but then 3111's eyes go blank like 3104's did. Then the same thing happens to 3112. Then all the others. Their eyes shut off and they collapse.

He cries out, and the Crownsguard exclaim in surprise. "He's got a pulse," one of them says, "but--"

3222's crying rises to a wail behind him and he whirls around. 3222 is sobbing as two Crownsguard hold him up. He's wearing a collar. 3223 is wearing one, too. He reaches up to brush the tears from his eyes before the humans can see, but one of the guards grabs 3223's wrist before his hand moves very far. 3221 stares straight ahead, pressing his hands tightly together, as a collar is fastened around his neck. 3179 is also being outfitted with a collar, and his eyes are fixed on Prompto.

He rushes to the one from the phone. "What-- But they-- Please don't put collars on them. Please."

The one from the phone turns to him. "Listen to me, boy. You may not be a soldier, but I can arrest you like any civilian if you hinder our efforts to neutralize a legitimate threat. Your...brothers will be unharmed if they cooperate, but now that they've stolen Crownsguard weapons and exhibited violent behavior, I can't allow them to go about unrestrained. We'll remove the collars once the MTs' rehabilitation has suitably progressed."

Luna rushes into the room. "What is the meaning of this, Shield Amicitia?!"

Luna and the one from the phone argue. He goes to his brothers, feeling shaky. The fours have been carried away, but 3221 and 3223 are standing very close to 3222 as he stares at the floor. 3179 raises a hand and rests it on Prompto's chest when he's close enough.

"Listen, kid, sorry about this," one of the Crownsguard mumbles, glancing toward the one from the phone.

He puts a hand on 3179's arm and on 3223's. He wants to say he's going to take his brothers away, but he doesn't feel brave enough. He doesn't feel brave at all. He feels scared, and he feels...frustrated. Not exactly. Something similar. Maybe...maybe he feels angry. But he feels scared more than he feels angry. "My brothers are tired," he says. He's not sure if they're tired, but it's getting late. They probably really are tired, so it's not a lie. "They should go somewhere else and sleep."

The guard who said he's sorry about this raises his hands in a way that he thinks means the guard won't stop him, so he starts pushing his brothers toward the door.

"Sir," one of the other guards calls. The one from the phone looks around, then frowns at Prompto. He feels like something is sliding up his spine. He's about to keep pushing his brothers, anyway, but Luna turns away from the one from the phone and marches toward them.

She looks angry, but she pushes him and his brothers toward the door just like he wanted to. "My Lord Shield," she calls over her shoulder, "if I see a single collar on any of the youngest ones for any reason, I will be taking Prompto and all 47 of his brothers away from the Crown City, and then you may explain to Marshal Leonis upon his return why his son is not available to greet him."

They leave the room. He's grateful that Luna is his friend.

Gladio comes back while they're gathering together all the MTs who came with Luna and the MTs who came with him. "How are things going?" Gladio asks.

"Your father is being rather high-handed," Luna says stiffly. She looks at 3221, 3222, and 3223, who are huddled together.

Gladio frowns. "Collars?"

"Indeed."

Gladio sighs. He looks at Brave's neck, which doesn't have a collar on it, and claps Brave on the shoulder. Brave flinches, and Gladio takes his hand away.

They all walk to the barracks together, him and the MTs who came with him and Luna and the MTs who came with her and Gladio and Arcis and Lacertus. There are a lot of them, but no one says anything except for an occasional murmur.

There are more Crownsguard both outside and inside the barracks. Two of them are standing by the door and start handing small packs to all the MTs as they come in. One of the guards laughs and takes back the pack she started to hand to him. "Oh - you're the marshal's boy, right? Guess you don't need this. You already have a toothbrush and stuff, right?"

"Yes."

"If you all head that way, there's some empty beds they can choose from."

In a large room, Crownsguard are directing MTs to beds. "Oh no, here's a whole slew of 'em," one of them says as they come in. He laughs and says to Luna, "The babies keep divvying themselves up." He points to beds where level ones are curled up with older MTs or piled together two or three or four to a bed. "Guess they don't like sleeping alone."

"I'm not surprised," Luna says. "Back in Niflheim, they were apparently locked up in lightless pods every night."

The Crownsguard stares at her. Then he reaches out and very gently pats Starlight's head. Starlight hides his face against Luna's shoulder.

Another Crownsguard sets a hand on 3222's shoulder and guides him to an empty bed, then tells 3221 he can have the upper 'bunk.' "Two of 'em can take that set of bunks," he says. Gladio tries to steer 3223 across the aisle toward where the Crownsguard pointed.

"Don't touch him, you-- you fuck human!" 3222 suddenly screams, pushing Gladio away from 3223.

Gladio stares at him. "What?" 3222 stands in front of 3223 and clenches his hands. "Did you call me a fuck human?"

"No, sir!" 3222 shouts.

Gladio grins. "You totally did."

3222 screams again and pushes hard against Gladio, but Gladio doesn't move. 3222 stares up at him. He looks scared.

"Why am I a fuck human?" Gladio asks.

"Because--! Because you want to hurt my - my brothers! So you're fuck!"

Gladio tilts his head. "Do you actually know what 'fuck' means?"

3222's fingers on Gladio's chest curl into fists. "It means bad," he whispers.

Gladio bursts into laughter. He puts an arm around 3222 and laughs so hard he bends over a little. He's so tall that even though his arm is around 3222, 3222 barely bends with him. 3222 huddles small in the curve of his arm.

Gladio finally stops laughing and asks, "What's your name?"

"05953222."

Gladio frowns, and 3222 looks down. "You don't have a name yet."

3222's head comes back up. He looks angry. "I'm an MT unit. MT units don't have names."

"Prompto has a name," Gladio says. "Brave has a name. Sunshine has a name."

"If it's appropriate for me to have a name, you'll give me one!"

Gladio raises his eyebrows. "You okay with that? Because my mother was Marigold Amicitia, I'm Gladiolus, and my sister's Iris, which means you'd end up with a flower name like Chrysanthemum or Rhododendron or something."

3222 stares at him. "Chry...santhemum?" he whispers.

Gladio smiles. "You like that?"

3222 keeps staring at him.

"Chrys for short, maybe. Make it less of a mouthful." There's a pause. Gladio ruffles 3222's hair. "What do you think of that, Chrysanthemum Argentum?"

"...Yes," 3222 whispers. He starts to cry softly. Gladio's arm slides back around him, and Chrysanthemum leans into him.

Prompto is glad that another one of his brothers has a name now.

TBC

A/N: You guys weren't overly fond of the last chapter, huh.... I hope you liked this one better!


	15. Part 14

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 14 (rough draft)**

Ignis finally comes back, looking tired and determined at the same time. When he finds out that some of the Crownsguard want to take MT units to their homes and look after them, he says, "Ah - in that case, let me send you something." He taps at his phone for a minute and then the other phones chime.

"Help, I've got a teenage MT," Lacertus says as he looks at his phone. He is 'fostering' the level two 3229. The one with brown hair is fostering the level one 3283, and she smiles as she looks at her phone.

"Whooaa," Arcis says, scrolling. "You wrote a book about the care and keeping of Prompto?" Arcis is taking the level two 3228 and the level one 3299. Prompto knows that 3228 and 3299 love each other, so he's glad they're permitted to stay together.

"It's merely a project I've been putting together in my spare time," Ignis says, "I hadn't thought the manuscript would see any significant use. I'm quite happy to be proven wrong."

It's late by the time everything is settled. The level fours are all hooked up to equipment now. The one with the white coat said that 3104 showed brain activity at first, but now he's in a coma just like the other level fours. She tried taking off the collars, but nothing changed, and the one from the phone made her put them back on.

Most of the other MTs are in the barracks that are just for them. He made sure they all had beds and blankets.

He's very tired, so he's glad that 3179 is carrying Sunshine. He holds Brave's and Luna's hands. Luna has Starlight in her other arm, and Starlight and Sunshine are both asleep. Four Crownsguard are following behind them, two because there will be so many MTs in Ignis's apartment and two for Luna, even though she told the one from the phone that she didn't need guards.

There are two more Crownsguard already standing outside the apartment. "You may go," Ignis tells them, then unlocks the door. Inside, Noctis is lying on the couch.

"Asleep already," Ignis sighs as he takes off his shoes.

"You expected him to be _awake_?" Gladio snorts. "Refused to go to his suite because he wanted to wait for his friends, now they're here and he's dead 'til morning."

Prompto's heart jumps a little, but he knows almost at once that it must be a figure of speech. Gladio loves Noctis and his primary function is to keep Noctis safe. He would be a lot more upset if Noctis was really dead.

Ignis shows them where to lay Sunshine and Starlight in the bed. Prompto teaches Brave and 3179 how to brush their teeth with the toothbrushes they were given at the barracks and they get into bed, too. He pulls the blanket up to cover them completely and puts kisses on them. When he turns around, Ignis is smiling a little bit as he watches them from the doorway. "Do you need anything?" Ignis asks quietly, looking at each of them in turn.

"No, sir," 3179 says.

"No, sir," Brave whispers.

"Very well. You needn't call me sir, by the way. Good night."

In the main room, Noctis is awake now and lying with his head in Luna's lap. They're talking quietly. He means to join them, but then he sees something by the window. Excitement rises up in him. "The plants!" He runs to look at them, and there they are, green and yellow and beautiful. They look very healthy, and his eyes prick with tears of relief and happiness.

"I've done my best with them," Ignis says, coming up beside him. "The marshal gave them into my care shortly after we lost you."

"Thank you," he says, gently touching the leaves and flowers and one of the spikes on the cactus. "Thank you." He picks them up and carefully takes them into the bedroom, hoping that Brave and 3179 aren't asleep yet. They're not - their eyes glow like red spots as they stop whispering to each other and sit up to look at him.

"Look," he says. He speaks quietly because Sunshine and Starlight are still asleep. "These are the plants. They're...they're _my_ plants." He knows they're his, but a little thrill of nervousness runs through him when he says it out loud. "They're beautiful. They're not people, but I love them."

3179 takes the red and green plant and holds it even more carefully than he does. Brave takes the plant with yellow flowers. He still holds the cactus. They all look at the plants. He can't see them very well in the dark, but Brave and 3179 still have daemon blood and can adjust their vision. He tells them how much water each plant needs.

"They make tissues for themselves out of sunlight and air, but the sun is on the other side of Eos right now. I'll put them here so you can look at them, then tomorrow I'll put them back by the window." He puts the cactus on the little table by the bed, and he puts the other plants next to it. He looks at them a little longer. Even though he can't see them clearly in the dark, he knows what they look like. He feels warm and pleased to know that they're healthy. Ignis has been taking care of them.

When he goes back out into the main room, Ignis is handing out cups of tea. He puts a cup into Prompto's hands, and it feels warm against his skin. "Prompto!" Noctis says, sitting up. "You have to tell us everything that happened!"

"I brought my brothers home."

"I mean from the beginning, dude."

He eventually discovers that Noctis means for him to start recounting what's happened to him since the last time they saw each other. He talks for a long time, and his throat starts to ache after a while. The tea helps. He's glad that Luna talks during some parts, and that apparently she already told Noctis about the weeks Prompto spent in the manor. Noctis interrupts a lot, and sometimes the humans need clarification and sometimes they ask questions.

At the end, everyone is quiet for a while. Then Ignis says, "Well done, Prompto." It makes his chest swell.

"You, too, m'lady," Gladio says.

"Oh, stars, I tremble to think what would have happened without those who came to our aid," Luna says. She's not trembling, but she puts a hand over her face. Noctis touches her arm, and she smiles at him.

"I'm really glad you're safe, Luna," Noctis says. He turns his head and smiles at him. "You, too, Prompto. I.... Uh, I missed you, you know."

"I missed you, too," he says. "I missed you a lot." He wants to keep talking to Noctis and all his other friends, but it's difficult to keep his eyes open. It's very late, and he's very tired.

Noctis and Luna look tired, too. Luna gets up and goes into the bedroom. She comes out carrying Starlight, who's still asleep. She says good night and leaves, and Noctis and Gladio leave, too. Ignis fetches a pillow and another blanket to unfold along with the one that's already on the couch. "Will you be all right here alone?" he asks.

"I'm not alone," he says. He looks at the bedroom.

"I meant, will you require any assistance caring for your brothers before I return in the morning?"

"Oh - no. I don't need assistance." If Sunshine has a nightmare, he already knows how to comfort him.

"All right. You're welcome to any of the food in the kitchen. There are Crownsguard posted just outside if you need anything, and, of course, you have my number." He pauses. "Ah - do you still have your phone?"

"Oh...no. The one with the purple hair took it."

"I see."

"I have a comm," he says. He takes it out of his pocket to show Ignis. Ignis tells him what frequency to contact him and Gladio on. Ignis rests his hand on the top of his head for a moment. "Prompto, I am very glad you returned home safely." This is Ignis's home, not his, but he thinks Ignis means Insomnia when he says 'home.'

"I'm glad I returned home safely, too. And that my brothers are home safely."

Ignis smiles. He moves his hand back and forth, a little bit like the head-rubbing gesture Cor often performs to show affection. Then he leaves.

It's very quiet. He lies down on the couch and spreads the blankets over himself. He watches the ceiling for a while. Then he pushes the blankets off and stands up. He goes to the bedroom and opens the door very quietly.

His brothers are inside. Sunshine is still sleeping, and Brave is asleep. 3179's eyes open and look at him. "You can't sleep?" He knows that 3179 can adjust his hearing, so he speaks very quietly so that the others won't wake up.

3179 makes soft noises. It takes him a minute to realize that 3179 is replying. "I can't hear you," he whispers. "I can't adjust my hearing anymore." If they talk for too long, Brave and Sunshine will wake up. He doesn't want them to wake up if they're tired and need to sleep. "Come with me."

He and 3179 go into the main room. They sit on the couch. "What did you say before?" he asks.

"You told them everything," 3179 says. "All the bad things we did, and all our malfunctions. But they didn't get angry."

"They don't get angry at us for things like that."

"Why?"

"Because...they're good." He remembers how hard it was for him to understand about 'abuse.' That he'd been abused. It's still difficult for him to understand. "Because they like for people to be happy and safe, and they think we're people. They know we're MTs, but they think we're people, anyway. And I like being a person. I like being happy and safe, and were not in Niflheim anymore, so no one's here to stop us from being happy and safe."

There's a long pause. "You--" 3179 says, and stops. There's another pause.

"What do you want to say?" he finally asks.

"I feel...two things. I feel like...you're a bad MT unit. You disobey humans and tell them things you shouldn't and you...do things. That you should never do. You have so many malfunctions that they should take you away and record all the things that went wrong in your brain and then terminate you.

"But I also feel like...you-- You take MT units. And you...break things that hurt. And take MT units away from those things. You do things that are wrong but...make MT units feel good. You...make me...feel good, just to look at you and listen to you. Even though you make me feel scared at the same time. And...if anyone came and-- and tried to take you away to cut you up and terminate you...I would - I would kill them."

He gasps, and he sounds like he's trying to speak while someone is strangling him, but no one is touching him. "I'll kill anyone - who hurts you...! Who tries to make you - a good MT unit again...!" He bows over, clutching his chest.

"3179...3179, listen to me breathe, try to breathe like I am." He realizes he's not breathing properly, either. Seeing 3179 so scared and in pain makes him scared, too. "3179, t-tell me five things you can see...."

When they're both breathing normally again, he has his arms squeezed around 3179 and 3179 is leaning against him. 3179's face is resting against his neck. "Are you still scared?" he asks.

"Yes. It's...farther. Closer, I feel happy that you're holding me and that no one came to correct us."

He closes his eyes and concentrates on how it feels to hold his brother. "The people here are good. They make me feel good. When I saw you all at the facility again...all the twos and threes and fours and ones...I wanted you to feel good, too. I wanted-- I didn't want you to be at the facility anymore. Because...3179, did you know that at the facility, they were training us to destroy everyone in Lucis? The people who hurt us so much wanted us to destroy the people who give us food and music and the sun and plants and video games. And even if it's wrong...even if it's the worst malfunction...it's still better to be in Lucis than at the facility. It's _better_."

After a while, 3179 whispers into his neck, "Will you be my commander?"

"We're civilians now. We don't have commanders, we have dads. When Cor comes back, I have to ask him if he's your dad." 3179 is still. Finally, he asks, "If I _was_ your commander, what would you want me to order you to do?"

3179 sits up. "Is it permitted to be a bad MT unit?"

"Yes," he says. "They like it when we're bad MT units. They want us to act like good people instead."

"Will you teach me how to be a good person?"

"Yes." 3179 smiles at him. It looks a little bit like Sunshine's smile. It makes him feel warm. "One thing that good people do is sleep in warm, soft beds. You should go back to the bed and sleep."

3179 looks at the couch. "Is this a bed?"

"No. But it's warm and soft, and there's not enough room in Ignis's bed for all four of us. So I'll sleep here, and you can go back and sleep with Brave and Sunshine."

3179 looks at him for a minute. Then he leans forward and presses his mouth to his head. After a moment, 3179 makes a brief smacking sound with his lips. Then he leans back. "Was that correct?"

He realizes that 3179 tried to put a kiss on him. He smiles. "Almost." he teaches 3179 how to make kisses. Then 3179 goes back into the bedroom.

He lies down and pulls the blankets back over himself. This time, he falls asleep right away.

TBC

A/N: Lithos made a joke(?) in one of the PWS author's notes about Ignis writing a how-to book for raising MTs. It fit perfectly here. XD

Just fyi, I edited the Aranea side story because the mistakes in it had been driving me crazy. Also, I think I made a slightly inaccurate statement in an earlier author's note; this fic is meant to take place roughly a year after the _beginning_ of _Poor Wayfaring Stranger_.

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and who went back and reviewed the one before! The initial near-silence was worrisome, so it's good to know you guys don't hate the direction I've been taking this story in. Feedback means so much to me, I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment!


	16. Part 15

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 15 (rough draft)**

He wakes up because something on the table by the couch is chirping. He squints at it, trying to finish waking up. Then he realizes it's the comm, and he puts it in his ear. "Hello?"

_"Prompto,"_ a voice says. It sounds like 3179, but 3179 should be asleep in the bedroom. Then he realizes it's not 3179.

"3175?"

_"Yes, sir."_

He sits up. Suddenly he feels very wide awake. "Did the one with silver hair hurt you?" He told 3175 to use the comm if the one with silver hair hurt him.

_"No. Dad struck me on the back and Biggs struck me on the shoulder, but both blows were mild and not painful."_

Oh. "That means affection."

_"What does 'affection' mean?"_

"It's a good pain you feel when you're attached to someone you care about. It's a warm feeling."

There's a long pause. _"Dad and Biggs felt affection for me?"_ 3175 asks. He sounds confused.

"If they hit you lightly enough that it didn't hurt, yes."

_"...Why?"_

"Dads are supposed to feel affection for their kids."

_"What does 'kid' mean?"_

"It's the subordinate of a dad." That's not quite right, but he doesn't know how to explain it. "Not exactly. But the one with silver hair is your dad, so you're her kid."

_"Oh."_

"Why did you use the comm? Are you hurt or scared?"

_"No. I'm using the comm because you answer questions without getting angry. How come they put me in a bunk to sleep instead of a pod?"_

He tries to remember what a bunk is. He knows he heard the word recently. Then he remembers that a bunk is a small, simple bed for soldiers. 3175 is not a soldier anymore. Neither are the rest of their brothers, but they slept in bunks, anyway, because the one from the phone didn't have anywhere to put them all except the barracks. MT units can still sleep in bunks even when they stop being soldiers. It's better than sleeping in pods. "Because a bunk is better than a pod," he says.

There's a pause. _"How is that relevant?"_ 3175 finally asks.

"Because you're good and you should have good things, and a bunk is better than a pod."

_"...I'm good?"_ 3175 says. He sounds astonished.

"Yes. You're good and you should have good things."

There's a faint clanking sound from 3175's end and then the one with silver hair's voice sounds in the background. _"Why am I not surprised. Jessie, we've talked about this - breakfast before tinkering."_

_"Y-Yes, Dad,"_ 3175 says. It sounds like he has a name now: Jessie.

There's a pause. _"What's that hand in the cookie jar look for?"_ the one with silver hair asks. Jessie doesn't answer. Then the one with silver hair says, her voice suddenly sharp and angry, _"What's that?"_ There's more clanking as she rapidly steps closer, then static that's painful in his ear. Then the one with silver hair's voice sounds loud in the comm. _"Who is this?"_

"It's Prompto."

_"...Prompto?"_ She doesn't sound angry anymore, and his shoulders loosen a little.

"Yes."

_"You were talking to Jessie?"_

"Yes. He has questions. If you're a good dad, you'll answer his questions without getting angry."

She snorts. _"I would if I knew he had questions. Oi, Jess. What's your question?"_

_"I...I--"_ There's a long pause. Then Jessie says, so faintly that it's difficult to hear, _"Why does the ship stay in the air when it's so big and heavy?"_

There's another pause. Then the one with silver hair laughs loudly. _"That's it?"_

_"...No. There are more questions."_

_"All right, well, let's make a deal: I'll answer as many questions as you can think of while we're eating breakfast. Sound good?"_

_"Y-Yes, Dad."_

_"All right. You got anything else for me, shortcake?"_

He doesn't have anything for the one with silver hair. "No."

_"All right, well, talk to you later, I guess."_ The comm goes silent.

He lowers the comm and thinks. Jessie has a name now, and his dad is going to answer his questions and provide him with food. He sounds like he is being adequately cared for.

He looks around. The light from the window is gray: it's early enough that the sun hasn't quite appeared over the horizon yet. It's late enough that he doesn't have to try to sleep again, though, so he gets up to shower and then goes to the kitchen to make breakfast for his brothers.

Ignis comes while they're still eating. "Everything all right here?" he asks as he takes off his shoes.

"Yes. I made coffee. It's for you, because it tastes bad and none of my brothers like it."

Ignis smiles widely for a moment, then quickly covers his mouth. When he takes his hand away, his smile is normal-sized. "Thank you, Prompto," he says, patting Prompto's shoulder as he passes by. "You are a godsend."

3179 straightens up. He watches intently as Ignis takes a cup down from a cupboard and pours coffee into it. Then 3179 asks loudly, "What does 'godsend' mean?" Then he covers his mouth with his hands and stares at the tabletop, trembling a little.

"I...I don't know," he says. He feels uncertain. 3179 didn't ask him the question - he looked at Ignis when he asked it.

Ignis finishes pouring his coffee. He comes to sit down at the table. He doesn't look at 3179. He says calmly, "It's a figure of speech. The gods are beings with great supernatural powers. I am reliant on good coffee to give me the energy necessary to meet my daily responsibilities. Since Prompto had the foresight to have my preferred type of coffee ready and waiting for my arrival, I am as grateful to him as I would be had he been sent by the gods themselves to aid me."

Prompto thinks this over. It makes him feel good to know that he was so helpful to Ignis. "Oh," he says.

"...Oh," 3179 whispers.

"It was a good question," Ignis says. "I invite you to ask any other questions you may have, now or in the future."

3179 stares at him, but Ignis keeps calmly looking at his coffee as he sips at it. 3179's eyes start to shine with tears. "Thank you," he whispers.

"You are most welcome."

"3179," he asks uncertainly, "are you crying because you feel bad?"

3179 brushes the tears away. "No," he says. "I don't feel bad."

"Oh."

They finish breakfast. He tries to help Ignis wash the dishes, but 3179 helps instead. When they finish, Ignis looks a little surprised and tells 3179 that he did a good job. 3179 makes the smile that looks like Sunshine's.

Noctis is at school, so they go to check on the other MTs. The fours are still asleep. He touches their faces and calls to them, but they still don't move. The one with the white coat tells him that there's been no change but they're not in any danger. She leans closer and murmurs, "I've been keeping the engineers clear of them, don't worry. Your dad ought to be back before the Shield gets too insistent about it."

The rest of his brothers are still in the barracks. Some of them are eating in the common room. Half of the level twos are in a room talking to a therapist like Dr. Fortis - there aren't enough therapists for all the MTs, so they're starting with 'group sessions' for now. A group of level ones are choosing soft toys out of a box that Luna and a Crownsguard are showing them. Two more Crownsguard are helping some MTs choose clothes from a rack. "This was the best you could manage?" Ignis says. He sounds displeased.

The Crownsguard stare at him, then at the rack, then back at him. "It's from the same storeroom we use for all refugees."

"Prompto's tastes are not typically Insomnian. Surely there were more colorful options in stock."

Most of the clothes on the rack are black, gray, and dark blue, green, or purple. A few of them are white, and one is red. "I'll...see what we can do, Lord Scientia."

Some Crownsguard leave and eventually come back with more clothes. These are much more brightly colored, and the choosing goes faster. Soon, he is surrounded by brothers wearing yellow, orange, bright green, blue, and pale purple. He himself changes into a yellow shirt and pants with orange and white stripes so he can give back the clothes he found in Ignis's closet after his shower. Some brothers still choose dark colors, but many of them look happier with the same kinds he would choose if he were them. He wonders if his own clothes are still in his room in the house by the park.

o.o.o

Ignis has to leave soon, and Prompto is busy all morning taking care of his brothers. They take turns having therapy sessions, and Luna heals some more of them. He answers their questions and teaches more of them how to play games.

After school, they go to the park near the Citadel - him and his favorite brothers and Noctis and Ignis and Gladio and Luna and Starlight. He shows his brothers the flowers and the pool. Sunshine and Starlight splash their hands in the water and laugh as Luna smiles at them. 3179 carefully holds a small, damp creature in his hands as Ignis tells him what it is, and Gladio points out the fish to Brave, who's so fascinated that he forgets to be afraid of Gladio.

Noctis sits next to him. "Hey," he says quietly. "They...they take up a lot of your time, huh."

"What does?"

"You know. The-- The clones. That you brought back from Niflheim."

He means his brothers. He looks at them, then back at Noctis. He's been spending a lot of time taking care of his brothers. Ever since they left the facility, he hasn't spent any time at all not taking care of them. "Yes." He doesn't mind, but...Noctis looks like he does.

"I mean - it's really cool, what you did for them. That facility sounds like bullshit, and I'm glad you got them out. I just...." Noctis is slowly tearing up pieces of grass. "I really missed you."

"I really missed you, too."

"Yeah. And...I guess I just kind of thought you'd let...you know, these ones stay with the others. In...the barracks. I just...." Noctis looks uncomfortable. He isn't looking at him even though he's talking to him. "It's kind of hard to hang out when you've got, like, a baby." His mouth suddenly stretches in an odd smile and he throws up his hands. "What the heck, man, you have a _baby_! How did that happen?"

"I felt bad to leave them at the facility because--"

"Yeah, I know, I just meant, you're only my age, but...you have a baby." He eyes him. "You think Cor's gonna let you keep him?"

The thought that Cor might not let Sunshine and Brave and 3179 stay with him makes him feel like there's something cold in his belly. There isn't enough room in the house by the park for all 47 of his brothers who are in Insomnia, but...there's enough room for Sunshine and Brave and 3179. But if Cor says they can't stay, then...Sunshine and Brave will cry, and 3179 will feel bad. He knows he'll feel bad and cry, too.

Luna comes over and sits down next to them. Sunshine and Starlight are shrieking with laughter as Gladio lifts them up and swings them, and Brave is watching with wide eyes and an uncertain smile. "I hope I'm not interrupting," Luna says.

"Nah," Noctis says. "Just talking."

"Luna," he asks, "is it wrong for me to have a baby when I'm the same age as Noctis?"

Noctis lifts his hands. "No, I didn't mean it like that! I just meant...maybe you could find a babysitter or something when we hang out...?"

"What does 'babysitter' mean?" He hopes it doesn't mean someone who sits on babies. He doesn't want anyone to sit on Sunshine.

"Like, you know. Someone to watch the baby while you do other stuff."

"Oh." He thinks. Maybe Gladio can watch the baby. He seems to enjoy playing with the level ones.

"I wouldn't mind watching the little one sometimes," Luna says. She smiles. "But we shall have to find a good caretaker, anyway. I would enjoy having uninterrupted time to spend with both my friends."

Both her friends. She has two friends, and one is Noctis and one is him. He's pretty sure that's right. "Your friends are Noctis and me, right?"

"Of course, darling."

He's smiling. Luna and Noctis look at him and smile back.

TBC

A/N: Had to be really careful about my phrasing regarding the Astrals, since neither in real life nor in-universe are they deserving of the term "gods." (I came to FF15 for Nomura and PWS, and I stayed for the amazing character dynamics; I _did not sign up for_ a poorly-written storyline and a pointless downer ending. ......Sorry, Lithos, if you feel differently; I'm not sure what your views on canon are. X'''D Other than the trailers and stuff, PWS was my first exposure to FF15, and I like your fic far better than the actual game.)


	17. Part 16

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 16 (rough draft)**

The one with the white coat calls to tell him that the fours' status has changed. He and his brothers and his friends go to the place where the fours are. "They still appear to be asleep," the one with the white coat says, "but they're showing much more brain activity now."

He looks at his brothers. He walks between their beds and touches them. "Maybe they're listening."

"What?"

"When I first came here, I listened a lot because I was scared and confused and I didn't understand anything. I listened because sometimes people would say things that helped me understand better. Cor said it's bad to listen to people when they don't know you're listening, but if they know, it's okay."

He's standing next to 3112. 3112's eyes open. He sits up. Then all the other fours open their eyes and sit up. Gladio curses and moves back, pushing Noctis and Luna behind him. No one moves for a minute. "Hello," he says. The fours are all looking at him. "I'm glad you're awake."

The one with the white coat starts doing the usual tests on the fours. It's quiet for a while except for her murmuring voice as she gives instructions. Then Luna smiles at the fours. "I hope you slept well," she says. "I, too, am pleased to see you all awake."

3111 is looking at him very intently. "Do you want something, 3111?" he asks. 3111 drops his eyes and is silent. Maybe he's afraid to speak. He moves close and asks again in a whisper, "Do you want something?"

3111 looks at him again, then raises a hand and gently touches his collar.

He swallows. "It's...a correction device. They don't use it often. Just...just don't try to take it off or hurt anyone. Then they won't use it."

3111's expression is still intent and a little bit frustrated. He softly touches his own temple. His eyes flick to the other fours. Then he looks back at him. "I...I don't understand." 3111 lowers his hand and his eyes. It makes him feel bad, to see his brother too scared to ask questions. "I...I order you to ask your question," he tries.

3111's eyes flick to the one with the white coat, then to Prompto's friends, then back down.

Gladio moves closer. "You heard him," he says. "Ask your question."

3111 swallows. His voice is nearly a whisper, thin and cracked. "Are we not permitted to telecommunicate?"

He doesn't understand.

But Gladio seems to. "The collars block transmissions. Why, you trying to transmit something to somebody?"

"No, sir," 3111 whispers, eyes down.

But he remembers - what the humans said on the airship. "You - you talked to the other fours. But now you can't, because the collars block transmissions."

3111 doesn't move, but all the color leaves his face.

"They can still talk, though," Gladio says. "They just can't...transmit." He looks around at all the fours. "Huh," he says quietly.

"Wait," Noctis says, moving closer, "they can, like, read each other's minds?"

3111's eyes flick to Prompto. He looks confused.

"Level fours have the ability to telecommunicate," he says. "They're not allowed to speak very much, but I think they transmitted messages to each other without speaking." He looks at Noctis. "I wish I could do that. If I could talk to you like that before I got a phone, I wouldn't have been so lonely."

Noctis puts a hand on 3111's shoulder, but he's looking at Prompto.

"All right," the one with the white coat says, nudging them aside, "last one. Give me a bit of room, please." She tests 3111. Then she straightens up and says, "Well, they're all reasonably healthy, as far as I can tell. Do you know why you collapsed yesterday?" she asks 3111.

3111's eyes are wide. "I-- M-My systems were shut down, so my body did not remain standing."

"Did you shut them down deliberately, or did they shut down for some other reason?"

3111 swallows. "I shut them down."

"Why?"

"Because...the level fours were - not needed at that time, so...we went inactive." His hands are pressed hard against the bed.

Prompto puts a hand on his shoulder. "You're not in trouble."

"Oh, certainly not, darling," Luna says. "We've simply been worried."

The one with the white coat steps back. "All right, this goes for all of you - do not shut down your systems unless it's to preserve some aspect of your health. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," all the fours say together.

Gladio calls his dad, who gives permission for them to take the fours to the barracks. When they arrive, Arcis and Lacertus and the one with brown hair are there, with the MTs they took. Arcis and Lacertus are arm-wrestling. When they all come in, Arcis says, "Prompto!" and loses the arm wrestling. Lacertus cheers and the one with brown hair rolls her eyes.

Arcis shoves Lacertus, then smiles at Prompto. "Hey, so! Good timing. We thought we should take a group photo of you all. We'll make some nice prints and you can frame it if you want."

The Crownsguard help Prompto and all his brothers in Insomnia arrange themselves on the stone steps outside the Citadel. The one with brown hair holds up her phone, and he smiles for the picture. When she lowers her phone, he goes to look at it with Arcis and Lacertus.

The MTs are in orderly rows, grouped mostly by level. The fours and threes are in the back with blank expressions. The level twos are in the middle, looking solemn or anxious. The level ones who aren't being held by older MTs are clustered in front. Some of them look scared and unhappy. Some of them have their hands in their mouths. Three of them are looking in different directions. One of them is crying.

Prompto is the only MT who's smiling. He's standing right in the middle, holding Sunshine in one arm and Brave's hand with his other. Brave is clinging to him and looks worried. Sunshine's face is hidden against his shoulder. 3179 looks very serious.

"Is it a good picture?" he asks. He's not sure. He likes seeing so many of his brothers all together, but he doesn't like seeing them unhappy.

"It's great," Noctis says, patting his shoulder.

"Family reunion," Gladio laughs.

"It could be an annual thing," Arcis says. "Every year, you all get together and take a group photo. It'll show your progress."

He remembers how different he was when he first came to Lucis. He's better now. He knows a lot more things, and he's happier. His brothers will get better, too. Maybe they'll smile in the picture next year. "Yes."

o.o.o

Days pass. The MTs in the barracks are given toys and plants and restricted tablets, and some more of them acquire names and go home with people from the Citadel. Therapists come to talk to them and teachers come to teach them things. Sometimes he's the one who teaches them. Servants and Crownsguard take MTs in small groups to visit the gardens and the pool and the library. Luna heals them, a few every day so she doesn't get too tired.

3179 has a name now. It's Fidelis.

When Noctis comes home from school, he does homework and then he and Prompto and Ignis and Gladio, and sometimes Luna and Starlight, take Brave and Sunshine and Fidelis to places like the park and the arcade. When it gets late and Gladio takes Noctis home and Luna takes Starlight home, he goes with his favorite brothers to Ignis's apartment. Ignis stays with them for a while, then goes to stay with Noctis so that Prompto's brothers can use his bed. Prompto sleeps on the couch. When he or his brothers have nightmares, they comfort each other.

o.o.o

All the MTs are in the common room. He's teaching them about volcanoes.

His new phone buzzes in his pocket. When he takes it out and sees that Noctis sent him a text message, more messages appear before he can start answering.

_Guess who showed up looking for you._

_Came straight here instead of reporting to Dad because he thought you'd be with Specs._

_I mean, you're with Specs a lot, but he doesn't know you're busy during the day now. He doesn't know about your brothers yet, I wanna record his reaction._

_It's Cor, btw._

_Your dad's back._

He should answer the text messages. But he's not answering them, he's walking very quickly, almost running. He didn't think about it, he just started doing it. Brave and Sunshine and Fidelis are hurrying after him.

There is the sound of many footsteps behind him. His brothers are following. He should tell them why he's hurrying, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't know how to explain why he's so happy and excited, and he feels like he'll stop breathing if he pauses to try. He knows he probably won't stop breathing. But he doesn't explain anyway. He just keeps walking fast, almost running.

He tries not to run into any humans, but they're slow and in his way. Some of them shout when they see all the MTs, and some run away. More and more Crownsguard arrive, speaking urgently into their comms.

"What's happening?"

"Are they attacking?!"

"Hold up, they've got the tiny ones with them--"

"No, sir, but they're heading _somewhere_ fast--"

"They're following the marshal's kid."

"Prompto-- Hey, Prompto! Where are you going?"

"Cor's my dad," he gasps out, but he can't stop.

They're almost to the elevator that goes up to Ignis's apartment. It's still far down the hall, but he can see it.

The elevator door opens, and a group of people come out. One of them hurries a lot faster than the others. It's Cor. His clothes are dirty and he has more hair on his face than usual, but-- it's Cor. It's Cor.

He wants to shout - Cor's name, or hello, or something. But he doesn't shout, he just runs, a full run now. Cor runs, too, and it hurts a little when they reach each other, but he doesn't care. He hugs Cor, but he still feels like Cor will...disappear, somehow. He squeezes harder, so hard his arms ache. Cor's arms are too tight around him, but he doesn't care about that, either.

"Kid," Cor whispers.

He tries to say Cor's name, but he cries instead. Cor puts a kiss on top of his head and rocks him a little. "You okay, kid?" he asks hoarsely.

"Yes. Yes." He's more than just okay. He's wonderful. He wishes he could use emoji for when he's talking instead of only when he's making text messages. He feels like a long, long string of happy faces and hearts. He has all his brothers safe away from the facility and he has Noctis and Ignis and Luna and all his friends and now he has Cor, too. He has everything. It's perfect.

He tries to back up a step so he can look at Cor, but Cor's holding him too tightly. Cor finally loosens his hold enough that Prompto can step back. "Cor," he says. His voice sounds breathless. "I brought my brothers." He turns and points.

Fidelis is standing a few paces behind him, and Brave is kneeling, holding Sunshine, who's trying to get away from him. Their other brothers are crowded in the corridor beyond; there are so many that a lot are hard to see behind the ones in front. There are some Crownsguard standing nearby, and other people peering in from the perpendicular corridors. Most of the humans are smiling.

Cor stares at Fidelis. Then his gaze shifts to all the brothers farther back and he suddenly rocks back a step. "What the _fucking hell_...?!"

The humans burst into laughter. Prompto turns his head and sees that there are a lot more humans behind Cor: Noctis, who's grinning as he holds up his phone like he's recording, and Ignis and Gladio, and more Crownsguard and other humans he doesn't know.

Humans are coming close now, and Gladio claps Cor on the shoulder. "Congrats, Cor, it's a boy. All 47 of 'em, plus the two in Hammerhead and the one flying around on a mercenary ship."

"What is...?!" Cor looks a little wild. He's clutching Prompto tightly again.

"They are Prompto's biological brothers," Ignis says. "Others like him that he brought along when he escaped Niflheim."

He squirms, trying to get free. "Cor, I want to tell you their names. You're holding me very tight."

Cor's arms loosen a little, and he stares down at him. "What?"

"You're holding me very tight."

"No, I mean--" Cor looks at his brothers again. "Fuck me."

He decides that Cor means it as a figure of speech and isn't serious.

TBC

A/N: Just one more full chapter left, then it'll be the epilogue and the character list.


	18. Part 17

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 17 (rough draft)**

The Crownsguard start escorting the MTs back to the barracks, and most of the other humans move away down the corridors. Ignis leads their group back to his apartment.

He sits down holding Sunshine because Sunshine was so unhappy to be away from him. Brave hides behind his chair, and Fidelis stands beside him. Cor sits across from him, staring. Ignis goes to the kitchen. Gladio sit down on one end of the couch and Noctis flings himself on the rest of the couch. "They're-- what?" Cor says. "Your...your brothers?"

"Yes. I don't know if you're their dad, but I don't know what else to call them, and Ignis said they are my brothers."

"Clones are genetically identical twins," Gladio says. "So, yeah, they're your brothers, kid."

"Yeah. But there isn't enough room in the house by the park for all of them."

Cor snorts. "Hell no."

"Marshal," Ignis calls from the kitchen, "Prompto has grown quite particularly attached to our three young guests, so I suggest that you not immediately dismiss his petition."

Cor snaps his head around. "What? Petition? What petition?"

Ignis comes over and hands him a cup. "Prompto has not been parted from these three since they arrived in the city."

"Yeah," Noctis says. "They follow him around like ducklings and cry when he needs to leave for a minute to pee."

"Noctis," Ignis snaps.

Noctis sighs. "Fine; only the baby did that."

Cor stares around at them. "You can't seriously think I'd just bring a bunch of kids home like stray cats."

Ignis frowns at him. Noctis laughs, short and loud. Gladio raises his eyebrows.

He feels like there's something cold in his stomach. "They're not...cats. So we can...take them to the house by the park, right?"

Cor stares at him.

Words start to fall from his lips. He's not thinking about what he's saying ahead of time, he just speaks quickly. "There's room. There's enough room in my bed for them, and I can sleep on the couch. We don't have to bring all 47 of them, but Brave and Sunshine and Fidelis are only three. They'll...they'll fit."

Cor's face softens, but he looks sad and tired now instead of angry. "Kid, it's not - I only just started feeling like I can handle _you_ , but I can't-- Six, can that one even talk yet? I can't take care of a baby!"

He's out of his seat, drawn toward Cor with urgency. "You don't have to take care of him, I'll do that. I've been taking care of all of them." There's not enough room on the seat for both him and Cor, and standing above Cor feels wrong right now. He needs to be lower than Cor. When he was at the facility, it felt bad to be lower than humans he wanted to plead with, but this is different. Those humans didn't care if they hurt him.

Cor doesn't like hurting him, he wants him to be safe and happy. So if he is lower than Cor, and keeps looking the way he knows his face looks right now, and maybe scrunches his eyes so the tears he can feel there come spilling out, it will be very clear how unhappy and hurt he is. Then maybe Cor will want to make him feel better, and right now, being permitted to bring his favorite brothers to the house by the park forever will make him feel much better.

He kneels by the chair and takes Cor's hand. Cor stares down at him. "Please," he begs. "I'll answer all their questions and cook their food and help them. You don't have to handle them. Or look at them. They can stay in my room. Just please don't make them stay in the barracks." An idea occurs to him. "Or you and me can move into the barracks, and it can be our new home, and Brave and Sunshine and Fidelis won't have to leave me."

"Six, are you kidding?" Cor says. Gladio laughs, but he's afraid to turn his head because it feels very important to keep gazing into Cor's eyes right now. If he looks away, he'll break...something, and Cor might not permit him to stay with Brave and Sunshine and Fidelis.

"Okay, okay, enough with the puppy eyes," Cor says, pushing him back. He covers his own eyes, then peeks back cautiously as if he's afraid to look at him. "Kid, we'll-- talk about this later. And get off the floor, for Astrals' sake." He gets up and hoists him off his knees and into the chair.

Cor goes over to the window and stares out of it, rubbing his hand over his head. Gladio is smiling wide, and Ignis is covering his mouth as if he's trying to hide a smile. Noctis is staring at Prompto. He looks surprised. He types something into his phone and Prompto's phone buzzes with a message: _You gotta teach me how to do that next time I ask Dad to let me have a cat._

Sunshine runs across the carpet and climbs into his lap. Brave darts over and squashes himself into the chair even though there isn't really enough room for two level twos. Fidelis walks over and stands beside them.

"They're like magnets," Noctis says. "Good luck, Cor."

Cor turns way from the window, then stops and stares at him and his brothers.

Ignis stands up. "Well, I think I'll get started on dinner. Prompto, Fidelis, would you care to help me?"

Once the meal is ready, they all sit down to eat together. Gladio makes Sunshine laugh a lot, and every time Sunshine laughs, the rest of them smile. Cor doesn't smile, but his face softens as he watches the level one.

Noctis is sitting next to him. It feels good to be able to talk to him. He missed Noctis a lot when he was at the facility.

After dinner, Fidelis and Gladio wash dishes and Ignis puts Sunshine in Cor's lap. Cor and Sunshine stare at each other. Sunshine pushes at Cor's chest and nearly falls. Cor catches him by the shoulders and keeps looking at him. Sunshine chews on his own hand and his eyes get big and wet. He's clutching the small chocobo in his other hand.

Cor glances down at it. "The chocobo thing's genetic, huh?"

Sunshine looks at the chocobo, then at Cor. "Koko," he says solemnly.

"Yeah," Cor says.

"Kweh," Sunshine says.

Cor drops his head all the way back in the chair and stares at the ceiling. "Damn it," he says.

"Damma," Sunshine says, then climbs off Cor's lap and runs to Prompto.

He and Noctis play cards, then they play a board game with Gladio and Brave. He's about to win, but then he pauses. He knows that the purpose of the game is to win, but...he - he wants Brave to win more than he wants to win. So he...makes a poor move. On purpose. His heart flutters. It feels both wrong and right at the same time. Ignis frowns, and his heart flutters a little more.

Brave tentatively moves his game piece. He smiles at him. "You win," he says. Brave gasps. Gladio claps him on the back and Noctis frowns. But Ignis smiles at him, and he relaxes. He looks at Brave's small, shy smile and feels warm.

o.o.o

It's time to go home. Gladio and Noctis have already gone. He and Cor are going to leave, too, to go to the house by the park. He doesn't know yet if his brothers are going to come with them or be sent to the barracks.

He's looking at Cor. Cor is looking away from him, his mouth tight. He moves so that Cor can see his face, but Cor quickly looks the other way.

"If it makes it easier, Marshal," Ignis finally says, "I wouldn't mind keeping either Fidelis or Brave here with me for a while."

Brave whimpers. Fidelis blinks.

"That still leaves me with two extras!" Cor exclaims. "A _baby_ , and a fresh-from-Niflheim Prompto all over again. I can't do it, Ignis!"

"As I remember it, you thought you wouldn't be able to raise Prompto properly, either, and yet your son has demonstrated otherwise."

Cor looks at him. He's holding Sunshine, who's asleep. Sunshine's head feels warm and heavy on his shoulder. He thinks he'll be very cold if Cor orders him to put Sunshine down and leave him behind.

"Kid," Cor finally says. He straightens up because Cor's voice - it sounds heavy, but something about it makes him think it's heavy because he's doing something he doesn't want to instead of because it'll make Prompto unhappy. "Just for a night or two. Okay? I'm gonna ask around, find some nice families to take them in. But _just for tonight_ , and maybe tomorrow, they can...come home with us."

His chest feels like a weight has been lifted off it, even though Sunshine is still heavily pressed against him. He's smiling, and Cor's face softens.

Cor turns and says gruffly, "All right, so which of you are staying with Ignis and which one's coming with us tonight?"

Brave's hands tighten in the back of Prompto's shirt. He and Fidelis don't say anything.

Cor finally flips a coin. It seems like a strange way to make a choice. The result is that Fidelis will stay with Ignis and Brave will go with them to the house by the park. He hears Brave exhale shakily behind him.

Fidelis doesn't move or speak at all. They say good night to Ignis and start to walk to the door. Then Fidelis suddenly strides over to them. He stops very close to Cor. Cor stands up straight and frowns at him.

"My orders are to protect the cargo," Fidelis says. "These MT units are the cargo. If they get damaged - I will make sure you never damage them again."

There's a pause. "Huh," Cor finally says. He nods and steps back. "Nice shovel talk."

They leave. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees Fidelis watching them until the elevator doors close.

o.o.o

The house by the park is familiar. It's good. It smells odd, and Cor says it's because no one's been home for so long. He says the smell will go away once the air's been circulating for a while.

He leads Brave upstairs and tells him to put the plants by the window. He lays Sunshine on the bed and then shows Brave where the bathroom is so they can brush their teeth.

Cor watches them, looking uncomfortable. Farther back, a Crownsguard he doesn't know leans against the wall.

"You can put your toothbrush in this cup with mine," he tells Brave. Then they change into sleeping clothes and climb into the bed with Sunshine. There's room for all of them because Fidelis is gone, so he doesn't have to sleep on the couch. He's still sad that Fidelis wasn't permitted to come. He hopes that Brave and Sunshine will be permitted to stay for more than only a night or two. Cor only meant to keep him for a few nights, but now he's keeping him forever. He hopes it will be the same for his brothers.

Cor sits down on the edge of the bed. Brave huddles almost completely under the blankets, but he shifts his hand so that it's clasping Cor's. It feels warm. "You gotta stop disappearing on me, kid," Cor says. "I was losing my mind for a while there."

"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to disappear on you."

"I know." Cor squeezes his hand.

"I was scared when the one with the purple hair said I wasn't permitted to go home. And I was so scared when they took me back to the facility that I couldn't breathe." A thought occurs to him. "I'm glad I went, because my brothers were there and...they'd still be there if I didn't go. But I'm very glad to be home now."

"Me, too."

"I love you, Dad."

Cor leans over and puts a kiss on his head. "Love you, too, son," he whispers. "I love you so damn much, Prompto."

He falls asleep still holding Cor's hand.

TBC

**A/N: I will double-update next time, so don't miss either the epilogue or the character list!**


	19. Epilogue - One Year Later

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_ ** **, a Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Epilogue - One Year Later** **(rough draft)**

As the first annual Silver Day approaches, the boys can't shut up about it and they apparently don't sleep a wink the night before - Cor is awakened twice by Sunshine and once by Brave, who seem to think that midnight, three, and four in the morning are perfectly reasonable times to get up and start preparing to leave for the party.

Cor finally wakes up for good around 7:00, this time by sunlight and the smell of Prompto cooking breakfast downstairs. Cor groans, stretches, yawns, then drags himself out of bed.

Once he's fully awake and has some food in him, he turns out to be the first one ready to go. Prompto and Brave horseplay a bit when they're supposed to be cleaning up the kitchen and Sunshine gets distracted playing with superhero action figures. They all eventually make it upstairs to finish getting ready and Cor supervises Sunshine, trusting the older boys to take care of themselves.

It's getting a little late now; Sunshine has gone to pester his big brothers and is currently whining at Prompto about something. Cor leans into the doorway to tell them they have to leave in two minutes, then goes downstairs and wanders into the living room.

While he waits for the boys, he glances over the framed photographs on the 'Argentum brothers' section of the wall. It's filled with pictures of boys and young men whom his sons are eager to meet up with today: Fidelis smiling shyly as he presents a prize-winning dish he made, with Ignis proudly resting a hand on his shoulder; Chrys, Aster, and Ryll with Gladio, brandishing their namesake tattoos; Orchid perched on Clarus's hip as they and Iris pause for a selfie in front of an ice cream stall; little Starlight laughing in Lady Lunafreya's arms as the dogs sprawl beside them; Ulric's crew with their flock of fours, plus the three younger boys being raised by Ostium, Altius, and Khara; Charlie and Bo posing, alongside a beaming Cindy and a sternly proud Cid, with a beautiful car they restored; a candid shot of Salvus setting a kitten on top of Reggie's paperwork; Jessie standing with the rest of Aranea Highwind's crew in front of their airship, gazing solemnly toward the camera, dressed in a swashbuckling red-and-black outfit that he almost certainly didn't pick himself; and all the rest, adopted or fostered by Crownsguard, Citadel staff, civilians - everyone who looked at those golden-haired, terrified children and decided to show them what life was _supposed_ to be like.

Every single one of those boys is now happy. Every single one of them is safe and loved, and Cor's heart swells with pride because his son did that. His kid, his 'firstborn' for all practical purposes, emerged from the darkest depths of Niflheim with fifty others like himself, bringing them into the light for the first time in their lives. Prompto is...amazing. And he's _Cor's_ kid.

As Sunshine's muffled shouts echo from upstairs, Brave scurries down and huddles in a corner, clutching his bag in his arms and giggling frantically.

Cor raises an eyebrow. "What's going on up there?"

"They're not following orders," the boy says softly, a nervous smile playing around his mouth.

"Mm-hm." He's gotten better at recognizing opportunities for deconditioning. "Do you think they're going to be punished for that?"

"No?" Brave guesses.

"That's right. They're just being kids."

Brave relaxes a little and they both wait until Sunshine comes stomping down the stairs and runs to Cor, who scoops him up. "Daddy, Prompto's being _mean_!" the little boy declares. He curls his hands into his father's shirt and looks at him expectantly.

"Oh, is he?" Cor says mildly. "What am I supposed to do about that, hm?"

"Make him give my hair ties back, 'cause they're _mine_!"

Prompto comes down the stairs, smiling, his bag slung over his shoulder and something hidden in his closed fist.

"I heard a report that you're being mean to somebody," Cor calls up to him.

"I was teasing Sunshine," Prompto explains as he approaches, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "He was looking for his dog hair ties, but I took them and pretended I didn't. It was funny when he looked for them and couldn't find them, I don't know why." He holds out his hand, revealing a pair of sparkly hair ties ornamented with plastic puppy faces.

"I KNEW you took them!" Sunshine shrieks, trying to grab them. Prompto playfully dodges until Cor swipes them out of his hand and sets the younger boy down. "He's a BAD BOY, Dad, you should ground him!"

"No name-calling. Hold still." Cor gathers up the child's golden locks into a ponytail. "Six, your hair's getting long, I need to take you for a haircut--"

"No! No haircut!"

"No?"

"I am growing out my hair like Chrys!"

Cor raises an eyebrow. "Are you going to dye it blue like his, too?"

"Noooo, Dad, don't be _ridiculous_!"

Cor sighs and hands the spare tie to his youngest, who put it on his wrist like a bracelet.

"Okay, kids, we're running late, let's go," Cor says, gesturing for Brave to come and starting to herd the other two toward the door.

They all scamper out ahead of him and practically run to the car, talking excitedly about all the plans they have for the mass get-together with their brothers. Cor pauses a moment on the porch to watch them. His boys are so precious to him, so bright and strong and wonderful. He doesn't know what he'd do without them. All those childless years seem strange to him now.

He watches Prompto and Brave and Sunshine laughing in the early morning sunlight. It feels warm.

o.o.o

A/N: Whoo hoo, main story DONE, baby! 8D I'm marking this as complete for now, but when I start posting the side stories, they're just going to be added on here. The only reason I kept Salvus's story separate was because of the trigger warnings. Salvus's story ought to be the first one I focus on next since I already started posting it, but I've done a lot of work on the flower triplets' story more recently, so we'll see.

Make sure you don't miss the character list! I noticed that when I double-post, non-subscribers sometimes miss the first chapter and subscribers sometimes miss the second chapter.


	20. List of MTs

**List of Magitek Trooper original characters in Raberba girl's Final Fantasy XV fanfic _Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land_**

(Except Prompto, obviously.)

TBA = To Be Assigned

Level Ones

05953281 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953283 - (Name TBA); adopted by Monica.

05953284 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953285 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953286 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953287 - (Name TBA); adopted by platonic co-parents Libertus & Crowe. Particularly fond of the level one 3290.

05953288 - Starlight; adopted by Lunafreya.

05953289 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953290 - (Name TBA); adopted by platonic co-parents Libertus & Crowe. Particularly fond of the level one 3287.

05953291 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953292 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953294 - (Name TBA); initially fostered by a neglectful Insomnian civilian couple; eventually adopted by Weskham.

05953295 - Orchid; adopted by Clarus.

05953296 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953297 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953298 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953299 - (Name TBA); adopted by Arcis's family along with 3228. Particularly fond of the level two 3228.

05953300 - Sunshine; adopted by Cor along with Prompto & Brave. Particularly fond of the level twos Prompto & Brave and the level three Fidelis.

Level Twos

05953221 - Aster; adopted by Gladio along with Chrys & Ryll. Particularly fond of the level twos Chrys & Ryll.

05953222 - Chrysanthemum (Chrys for short); adopted by Gladio along with Aster & Ryll. Particularly fond of the level twos Aster & Ryll.

05953223 - Amaryllis (Ryll for short); adopted by Gladio along with Aster & Chrys. Particularly fond of the level twos Aster & Chrys.

05953226 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953227 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953228 - (Name TBA); adopted by Arcis's family along with 3299. Particularly fond of the level one 3299.

05953229 - (Name TBA); adopted by Lacertus.

05953231 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953232 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953233 - (Name TBA); adopted by Pelna.

05953234 - Prompto; adopted by Cor along with Brave & Sunshine. Particularly fond of the level two Brave, the level one Sunshine, & the level three Fidelis.

05953236 - Bo; adopted by Cindy along with Charlie. Particularly fond of the level three Charlie.

05953237 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953238 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953240 - Brave; adopted by Cor along with Prompto & Sunshine. Particularly fond of the level two Prompto, the level one Sunshine, & the level three Fidelis.

Level Threes

05953161 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953162 - (Name TBA); adopted by Dustin.

05953165 - Salvus; adopted by Regis.

05953167 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953170 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953171 - Charlie; adopted by Cindy along with Bo. Particularly fond of the level two Bo.

05953172 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953175 - Jessie; adopted by Aranea.

05953177 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953178 - (Name and adoptive family TBA.)

05953179 - Fidelis; adopted by Ignis. Particularly fond of the level twos Prompto & Brave and the level one Sunshine.

Level Fours

*Mentored by Nyx's crew

05953104 - Magpie*

05953105 - Sparrow*

05953107 - Lark*

05953109 - Raven*

05953111 - Kestrel*

05953112 - Robin*

05953116 - Wren*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4 December 2020 - Okay, I edited out all the MTs who died back at the facility because most people were fixating on them rather than the living ones like I intended. X''D The purpose of sharing the list was just to show the names and adoptive families, I didn't mean to depress anyone by specifying the dead ones!
> 
> (For those who are still curious, there were initially twenty MTs in every batch, so just fill in the missing numbers and you'll know the dead ones.)


	21. Just Another Face In the Crowd (part 1)

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land: Just Another Face In the Crowd_ **

**A Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 1 (rough draft)**

Summary: Why Brave Argentum looks like Noctis Lucis Caelum.

o.o.o

He first realizes it during the mission to acquire more clothes. He's holding onto the back of Prompto's shirt and counting the number of diamond shapes on it so he won't have room in his brain to think about how many humans are staring at him. But even though he's concentrating as hard as he can on counting, he's still thinking about humans staring at him. He can't help glancing up every few seconds to check, and there's always at least two humans staring at him, sometimes more.

He tries to concentrate on Prompto's voice and the voices of the humans who own them now, but he doesn't understand anything they're saying. The counting is slightly more successful in distracting him, so he goes back to counting.

Their group consists of four MT units and four humans. The MT units are Prompto, Fidelis, him, and Sunshine. The humans are Cor, Ignis, and two people in uniforms whom Prompto called 'silent ones.' The silent ones are silently following them around. Prompto and Ignis are giving Fidelis instructions about how to select articles of clothing. Sunshine is lying on the ground, waving his feet in the air and blatantly ignoring Cor's orders to stand up. Cor is talking to him sternly instead of correcting him for insubordination.

His shoulders are painfully tense, and every second that goes by without Sunshine being hit or electrocuted or sent to a correction chamber makes him feel more and more scared and panicked, so he tries to go back to being scared about humans staring at him.

After a while, he realizes that not all the humans are staring directly at him, but they are staring in his direction. They're staring at the entire group of MT units. He hypothesizes at first that they're staring at Sunshine's outrageous display of malfunctioning behavior and Cor's inexplicable delay in correcting him, but Prompto is malfunctioning almost as blatantly, and Fidelis and him are only slightly malfunctioning, but the stares seem to be evenly distributed.

A little hopelessly, he tries to listen again, wondering if the comments of the starers might make any more sense now than they did before.

"--from Niflheim?"

"--but why would they all look _exactly_ the same--"

"--like some kind of army of Leonis love children--"

"--think it has something to do with that Citadel press release that keeps getting rescheduled...?"

'Look exactly the same.' He and the other MT units...his 'brothers'...look exactly the same because they're clones. Are the humans staring at them because they look exactly the same?

He doesn't understand why the humans are surprised and confused about clones looking identical, but he does notice something new: the MT units all look like each other, but they don't look like anyone else. At the facility, a lot of humans had yellow or silver hair, some had red or light brown, and he never saw any humans with black hair. But here, inside this 'city' called 'Insomnia,' most of the humans have black or dark brown hair, a few have light brown, and only a very few have yellow, silver, or red hair.

Once he realizes there's a difference in hair color, he starts to notice and remember additional differences. Humans don't have spots on their faces like Prompto does and like the other MT units developed soon after leaving the facility. Their eyes, too - most of the humans here have eyes shaped like Noctis's instead of the rounder eyes of MT units and the humans at the facility. And regardless of shape, no human has any shade of purple in their irises like MT units do after losing all their daemon blood; even the few humans with blue eyes, like Noctis, have a different, deeper shade of blue than the level ones do.

It's not just genetic traits. Even the clothing is different - at the facility, most humans and MT units wore either white or shades of gray or sometimes red, and Luna wears white, but everyone here wears dark colors. Noctis and Cor and Gladio and the silent ones wear a lot of black; other humans wear grays and blues and browns so dark that they're nearly black. Some outfits contain one article that's white or sometimes deep purple or red or green, but the outfits are overall dark, dark, dark.

Prompto is the only living thing in sight wearing yellow. He's the only one not wearing any dark colors at all.

He realizes with a jolt of horror that he and his brothers are very easy to stare at when they stand out so much with their bright clothing and bright hair. They wear fake eyes to conceal the purple, but they can never truly hide because they will always be the most noticeable, incongruous beings in any room in Insomnia.

"Brave?" Ignis says. He sounds like he's called to him more than once.

"I'm sorry," he chokes out. At the facility, he would be corrected for his failure to pay attention and his lack of respect. He's already cringing, braced for correction even though Prompto said corrections are rare here. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear. I didn't-- I'm sorry." Prompto puts a hand on his shoulder. He's grateful but still scared.

"Quite all right. I merely asked if you would like to choose an item or two for yourself before we move on to a different section."

He looks instinctively at Prompto. Prompto smiles at him. No one ever corrects Prompto for smiling even though it's inappropriate behavior for an MT unit.

He looks at Fidelis. Fidelis is carefully holding a small stack of neatly-folded clothes. One of the articles of clothing is purple, one is gray, and one is tan. All of them are covered with black patterns similar to the one on Ignis's shirt.

He looks at Sunshine. Sunshine has a long strip of translucent pink fabric wrapped around his body. The pink strip is covered with glittering specks and the ends are dripping with strings of beads. Sunshine is giggling as he flops one end of the pink strip with his hand, causing the beads to make a tinkling sound. Cor is standing next to Sunshine, watching him with a small smile, holding a large stack of pink and orange and yellow clothes.

Fidelis and Sunshine have finished selecting clothes. Prompto already has clothes at home. Now it's his turn to select clothes, but instead, he's staring at Ignis.

"Is there a particular color that stands out to you more than the others?" Ignis asks.

He turns and looks out over the racks of clothing. Yellow stands out the most because it's so bright, brighter than most of the other clothes in the store. Ignis wants him to select yellow clothes. With his yellow hair and pale blue-and-purple eyes and the spots on his face and the yellow clothes, he'll stand out like a beacon among all these dark-haired, dark-clothed people.

At the facility, he looked identical to all the other MT units, so the humans never paid particular attention to him unless he performed poorly, but here, MT units look different enough that some humans can tell them apart. Even if he performs just as adequately as his brothers do and his barcode is covered, humans can still look straight at him and identify him as _him_. They won't have to look up his record to see how inadequate he is, they already know at a glance.

He's trembling. He hasn't responded to Ignis. No one has corrected him, but he can't move or speak even when he tries. Cor sighs, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He knows Cor might not correct him, but seeing that Cor is displeased hurts almost as much. Not physically, but...somehow, it hurts, anyway.

A hand touches his shoulder again. He flinches, but it's Prompto's voice that says softly, "Brave," so he cracks open his eyes. He darts glances at Cor and Ignis, but they don't approach, so he looks at Prompto again, feeling a little hopeful. Prompto always makes things better. "Why are you scared?" Prompto whispers, too quietly for the humans to hear.

"I'm scared of yellow," he whispers back, as quietly as he can.

Prompto frowns a little and his heart jumps. Displeasing Prompto hurts even more than displeasing Cor. "What colors are you not scared of?" Prompto asks.

"Black," he replies, so quickly that he surprises himself a little. "And dark blue and dark brown and gray."

Prompto looks surprised. "Oh," he says. He looks around, then walks away. He glances over his shoulder, then stops and comes back. He takes his hand and then starts walking again so that he has to follow. They stop in front of a rack of black clothes. "Do you like these?" Prompto asks.

He darts a glance at the humans, who have followed them. Cor is frowning, but Ignis looks more confused than displeased even though he told him to select something yellow. When Ignis doesn't say anything, he asks a question, even though he can't make his voice get any louder than a whisper. "Is it permitted?"

Ignis blinks. "You...prefer these?"

He doesn't know how to respond. Ignis didn't answer the question, and MT units do not have preferences, so he watches Ignis and waits.

"You want these instead of the happy colors?" Cor asks.

He looks at Prompto, worried that he'll be corrected for failing to respond even though there's no proper way to respond: it isn't permitted to say 'yes,' and it isn't permitted to lie, which he would be doing by saying 'no.'

"You're permitted to choose black," Prompto says.

He looks back at the humans to see if they'll confirm or deny this.

"You may certainly choose black if you like," Ignis says. "It's simply a little unexpected, given your brothers' tastes."

"Are these...acceptable?" he asks.

"Any particular style?" Cor says, sliding each article of clothing along the rack. They're all black, but some differ from each other in design.

He doesn't know which of the designs is most appropriate. He peeks at the more distant humans and studies them. Then he cautiously grasps an article of clothing that's similar to one being worn by a level two human.

"Well...if you like it, you like it," Cor says. "What size is it?" Without waiting for an answer, he pushes closer and inspects a tag on the article of clothing.

The choosing gets a little easier after that. He watches level two humans as surreptitiously as he can and selects articles of clothing that most closely resemble what they're wearing. By the time he's finally permitted to stop, he's holding a stack of folded clothing meant specifically for him. He feels...warm inside, even though he's still worried about his hair.

"All right," Cor says, "let's pay for all this and get out of here."

"Will we have milkshake?" Prompto asks.

Cor smiles at him. "Sure, kid. Now _you'll_ get to see what it looks like when someone gets their very first taste of sugar."

o.o.o

'Milkshake' is very good.

After they all finish consuming milkshake, they leave the 'mall.' Ignis takes Fidelis away in his car, and Prompto and him and Sunshine get into Cor's car.

They don't go straight back to the house by the park - Cor stops at a 'grocery store' first because Prompto doesn't have all the necessary ingredients to construct the food he plans to make for dinner. Prompto walks around the grocery store confidently, selecting items off of shelves and out of bins. Cor follows him, pushing a cart. Sunshine sits in the cart. He follows Cor. Humans are staring at them all and saying things like 'Niflheim' and 'Marshal' and 'carbon copies' and 'rainbow vomit.' He shrinks into his black clothes, wishing his hair was black, too.

At first, the humans are staring at all of them, but as time passes, Sunshine gets louder and louder and attracts more and more of the stares. As they're standing by a short conveyor belt near the front of the store, Sunshine's complaining turns into shrieks. He lies on the floor and screams and kicks. He ignores both Cor and Prompto when they try to stop him.

Sunshine's screams are making his heart pound painfully in his chest, and he starts to hear a ringing chime that makes it difficult to hear anything else. He doesn't have to resist the impulse to cover his ears because his body feels frozen. He keeps expecting Cor to severely correct Sunshine for malfunctioning so outrageously, but Cor only growls, "That's the last time you're getting sweets on an outing" instead of hitting him.

That's the last thing he's able to hear outside the chime. The chime gets so loud it drowns out all other noise. He closes his eyes, and for a while, he isn't aware of anything outside the dark and the chime.

TBC

A/N: I got the idea for this story while commissioning Breezy for Promised Land art of Prompto and his favorite brothers ([which turned out amazing](https://breezy-cheezy.tumblr.com/post/643037635850452992/commission-for-raberbagirl-prompto-and-a-few-of)! :D Next up is the flower triplets), but the timing of the actual draft was completely random. I went from being so busy and stressed out that I wrote nothing for months to churning out this entire 13,600-word draft in two days. I don't know if my writing productivity is back or if this was just a random fluke in the middle of the suckfest that is Winter 2020/2021, but either way, enjoy; this entire side story's done. I had a choice between posting it as a giant one-shot or dividing it up into a small multi-chapter, and as usual, I chose the latter.


	22. Just Another Face In the Crowd (part 2)

**_Leading My Brothers To the Promised Land: Just Another Face In the Crowd_ **

**A Final Fantasy XV fanfic by Raberba girl**

**Part 2 (rough draft)**

Slowly, his awareness comes back. The chime is still ringing in his ears, but more quietly now. He hears a repeated beeping sound and Sunshine crying nearby, tired low sobs instead of the screams he was making before. He feels hollow, like his intense fear is floating and distant instead of in his chest like usual.

He cracks open his eyes. He turns his head and sees Prompto holding Sunshine close, patting him and whispering to him as Sunshine cries. He doesn't understand why no one is correcting Sunshine.

He sees Cor tossing items from the cart onto the conveyor belt, looking so angry that the fear starts to descend into his chest again. He starts to shake, and he quickly looks away.

The human at the end of the conveyor belt is passing each item over a pane of glass with a red light underneath. The machinery beeps every time she does this. That's where the beeping noise is coming from. She looks angry, too. Or maybe tired, but...probably angry. All the humans behind them and by other conveyor belts also look angry, except a few who are smiling a little as they hold up phones.

Every angry human face makes the fear settle deeper in his chest. He looks straight ahead so he won't have to see angry humans anymore.

_5 HOTTEST HAIRSTYLES OF THE SEASON! Tips inside!_

The words fill his vision, large and bright blue. It takes him a minute to realize that the words are printed on a packet of glossy paper sitting in a rack at his eye level.

_LATEST TRENDS!_

There are a lot of colorful words covering the page, superimposed on an image of a level two male human with black clothes and spiky black hair. A much smaller and slightly blurry image on the side depicts Noctis, who's walking and frowning at something out of sight. Gladio's hand is on his shoulder and Ignis's elbow is close to his other side, barely visible on the edges of the image. The human in the larger, clearer image closely resembles Noctis.

He doesn't realize he's holding the glossy packet until his hands shift and it falls open. His hands grip the packet more tightly. The page he's looking at now has a closeup of the human on the cover, this time with arrows pointing to various parts of his head and instructions that seem meant to inform the reader how to recreate the specific hair shape.

"You buying that?" the human making the beeping sounds asks, and his shoulders twitch in surprise and dread at being noticed.

Before he can answer, Cor snatches the packet out of his hand and throws it on the conveyor belt. The one making the beeping sounds picks up the packet and scans its barcode. She tucks the packet into a bag on her other side. Cor marches to the counter there and slides his arms through all the holes near the tops of the bags. "Boys, let's go," he orders. He sounds so angry.

He and Prompto hurry after Cor. They get in the car. Cor starts to drive. Sunshine's tired sobs in the enclosed vehicle make Cor's silence sound even more intense. The chime continues to ring in his ears, and his stomach churns.

"Cor," Prompto says after a while, "I'm sorry."

"Kid, you're fine."

"I don't know why Sunshine is doing this. I feel frustrated, and...and I feel bad that he's making you feel bad. And I feel bad that I can't stop making him make you feel bad."

Cor...chuckles. Maybe he misheard the sound through the noise of the chime, but...it sounded like a chuckle. He doesn't understand why Cor would chuckle if he's angry. Cor reaches over to pat Prompto's knee. "Kid, it's not your fault. I'm the one who signed up for this. You've been _helpful_ , okay? I'd have probably lost it in there if it wasn't for you."

A corner of his mind that's not full of fear and dread wonders what Cor would have lost in there if not for Prompto.

"Are you angry with Sunshine?" Prompto asks.

He holds his breath and strains to hear Cor's answer through the chime.

"I mean...I'm not _happy_ about him throwing a tantrum in public, but...you know. I gotta get used to this sort of thing."

After a pause, Prompto says, "I don't understand."

Cor chuckles again. He almost certain it really is a chuckle. "He's a toddler. They do this, throw tantrums and stuff; it's-- it's actually a good thing, now that I think of it, considering his background. It's normal. Iris used to do it, Gladio did it once or twice, Noctis ended up on the front page once when he was two for something similar. It just means they're tired. I shouldn't have stopped by another store after a long day of shopping; we could have survived a couple of canned meals."

He doesn't understand anything they're saying, but Cor doesn't seem angry anymore and Prompto has relaxed. He relaxes a little, too, and the chime gradually starts to fade.

At the house by the park, Prompto reaches for Sunshine, but Cor unbuckles him and picks him up instead. Sunshine's dull crying rises back into panicked screams.

"Brave," Cor says, "help your brother carry in the groceries." He goes into the house, taking Sunshine out of sight.

He immediately moves to obey orders, but his vision soon blurs and tears start to slip down his face. He can hear from the sounds that Cor took Sunshine upstairs. Sunshine is still screaming. He's finally being corrected. It will be a very terrible correction. He's received agonizing corrections even after trying his best; for Sunshine, who disobeyed so flagrantly and for so long...he's probably being terminated.

A sob breaks out of him, and he barely manages to set the bags he's carrying down on a raised surface. He's not quite sure whether the surface is the table or a counter.

"Brave, what's wrong?" Prompto asks.

"I don't want Sunshine to be terminated," he chokes out. He can admit it to Prompto because he's just an MT unit (though Prompto does have a terrifying habit of relaying incriminating information to humans.... They never act on it, though).

"Sunshine's not being terminated," Prompto says. He sounds alarmed.

"He's malfunctioning...it's such a bad malfunction...Cor took him away...Sunshine deserves it but I feel very bad, anyway. I feel bad!"

"Cor won't terminate Sunshine. Or correct or modify him." Prompto takes his hand and leads him upstairs. He covers his ear with his other hand and shuts his eyes tightly because he doesn't want to see Sunshine get terminated. He trips on the stairs several times and nearly falls.

Prompto comes to a stop. Sunshine has stopped screaming and is making low sobs again. Cor's voice is so quiet and not angry that he opens his eyes a little without meaning to. He doesn't see any blood or straps, so he opens his eyes all the way.

None of the lights in the room are on except the small, soft light near the floor, but he can still see because the sun is so powerful that light makes it into the room past the covering over the window. Sunshine is lying on the bed, sucking on his hand and clutching a chocobo toy with the other. Cor is rubbing his back and murmuring. Music is playing softly.

He...he doesn't understand. He feels confused. He doesn't understand why Cor is speaking to and touching Sunshine so gently, and he doesn't understand why Sunshine is still crying even though no one's hurting him.

Cor sighs. "Get some sleep, kid," he tells Sunshine, then gets up and comes to the door. He doesn't realize he's retreating until his back hits the wall. He freezes.

Cor closes the door behind him, but not all the way. He frowns at him and gestures. "What's all this about?"

"Brave is scared," Prompto tells him.

"Yeah, I can see that." Cor sounds tired. "What's freaking you out this time, kid?"

He doesn't know how to answer the question. He's so stupid and so tired from being scared. He hates being scared _all the time_. He didn't used to know to hate it, but now that Prompto has shown him what it's like to have other feelings, being scared makes him feel even worse than it did before. He barely even _realized_ he used to be scared all the time until he discovered what it was like to almost not be.

"He thinks you're going to terminate Sunshine."

Cor sighs again, very deeply. He puts his hands on his shoulders, and he tries not to flinch. "Kid," Cor says, "I will not hurt Sunshine. I will not hurt you or Prompto. Or Fidelis. Okay?"

"Yes, sir," he whispers. He swallows a sob when he realizes he got it wrong. "Y-Yes, C-Cor."

Cor puts a hand under his chin and nudges it up so he can't look away. He goes completely still, his eyes locked on Cor's, feeling more scared than ever.

"Kid," Cor says. "Brave. I will not hurt you or Sunshine. I _won't_. I'm-- It's my job to keep you safe. It's my job to make sure you _don't_ get hurt. Understand?"

No. No, he doesn't understand. Cor's a human, and they're MT units. It doesn't make sense for a human to prevent an MT unit from getting hurt. "Yes, Cor," he says.

Cor sighs. "I can't deal with this right now. Prompto, you still feel like cooking, or do you want to just warm up some leftovers?"

Prompto considers. "I want to cook."

"Okay. Brave, I kind of need a break. Think you can entertain yourself for a while?"

He doesn't know what that means. "Yes, Cor," he says quickly. He hopes Prompto will explain the orders.

"Good." Cor goes downstairs. He lies on the couch and rests his arm over his face.

"Do you want to help me cook?" Prompto asks.

"I...I have to entertain myself."

"Oh."

He lowers his voice to a whisper so Cor won't hear. "I don't know what 'entertain' means."

Prompto fetches _Royal Lucian Dictionary_ and looks up the word. 'Entertain' means to hold the attention of someone with something amusing or diverting. He looks up 'amusing' and 'diverting.' All the definitions refer to each other, but one of them mentions 'pleasing.' "Will you find it pleasing to help me cook?" Prompto asks.

"Yes." He finds it pleasing to be close to Prompto, and he'll be permitted to stay close if he helps Prompto cook.

They cook dinner. When it's ready, Prompto tells Cor. He has to wake up Cor because Cor fell asleep while they were cooking. Then Prompto goes upstairs.

Cor shuffles to the table. He sits on a chair and rubs at his eyes. He sets his elbows on the table and rests his face in his hands for a while. Then he looks up. He sees him watching him and frowns.

He quickly takes a step back, wondering if he wasn't permitted to watch Cor. "You okay, kid?" Cor asks.

"Yes," he says.

Cor sighs and looks away. He sees the packet of glossy paper and frowns.

He clenches his fingers and hopes Cor doesn't get angry that the packet is still resting on the table. Neither he nor Prompto knew where to put it. "Where'd that magazine come from?" Cor asks.

He's so surprised that it takes him a moment to answer. "The grocery store."

Cor raises his eyebrows. "Did you st--? I mean, uh...did the cashier scan it?"

The packet's barcode was scanned by the red light. "Yes. You gave it to the one who made the beeping, and she scanned it."

"I - _gave_ it to the cashier?" Cor looks surprised and confused.

He swallows. Maybe his memory is malfunctioning. Or maybe he misunderstood when Cor asked about scanning. "It...beeped."

"Huh." Cor doesn't look angry, only puzzled. He feels relieved.

Cor looks at the packet, then at him. "Why would I buy a magazine?"

He doesn't know. He stares at Cor and wonders how to answer.

Prompto comes back downstairs. He's carrying Sunshine. Sunshine isn't crying anymore - he's rubbing his eyes and clutching the Koko in his fist. "It's time to eat," Prompto says.

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> **I commissioned some[art from Breezy of Fidelis, Sunshine, Prompto, & Brave](https://breezy-cheezy.tumblr.com/post/643037635850452992/commission-for-raberbagirl-prompto-and-a-few-of). :)**


End file.
